When I think of who – in my opinion – deserves and doesn’t deserve Personal Independence Payments (full disclosure: I get the enhanced form, as I am in a wheelchair, cannot walk and cannot leave my flat without being pushed by another person), I think of a variation I’ve created on the radio show . I call it Desert Island Disabilities. If the person suffering was shipwrecked on a desert island, what would transpire?

I – or a person with cancer or many other diseases, washed up without their drugs – would be dead within a few weeks. But for many people claiming PIP for a range of mental health conditions, who face no work requirements, it might just be the making of them. With no time to sit around and google their symptoms on the internet, survival would become an imperative. All that frustrated energy which previously had been invested in getting what they believed was their birthright would now be employed on catching fish, climbing trees to shake down coconuts, building shelters and attracting the attention of passing vessels. When rescued, they could write an inspiring account of their experience.

Government figures show more than 600,000 claim PIP for anxiety and depression, including 60,000 young people. There is no requirement to work attached to PIP, which is paid out at between £1,580 and £10,120 per year. In total, 4 million people in England and Wales are claiming the benefit – an astonishing figure.

Securing PIP for mental health has even become a small business in itself for enterprising types, while PIP “influencers” on social media now promise to help claimants secure higher payments.

Psychiatric disorders now account for 39 per cent of all PIP claims – by far the largest category. It makes me furious to think how many of these are fake, and which may be bringing genuinely disabled people such as myself – and numerous people even worse off than myself – under suspicion, and even in danger of losing what we have due to the widespread public desire to drain the swamp.

We’ve all read about the lying rotters who see benefits as a nice bit of pocket-money – supplied by the suckers who work for a living. Earlier this year, Catherine Wieland of Hove was convicted of nabbing £23,000 in benefits after she claimed to be housebound with anxiety – and was photographed zip lining and surfing during a lively looking trip to Mexico.

In the present day, the rush to “be kind” to those with mental health issues, the physically disabled and ill – who PIP was invented for – are in danger of becoming the poor relations, without the reserves of energy and entitlement mental health champions often possess.

“Enjoy spending your PIP on cocktails!” an embittered ex-friend wrote to me, in what was obviously meant to be a devastating end to our tempestuous alliance. (She has spent much of her adult life spending her own benefits on holidays in the sun; her various mental ailments have been rediagnosed repeatedly.) But it’s not my PIP I spend on my copious cocktails – I spend my PIP on the expensive business of being disabled. I spend it on adult nappies, night pads, enough cleaning products to stock a small hospital, an endless supply of bed-sheets and towels, three types of wipe, a cleaning service to keep my home decent now I can no longer use the vacuum cleaner without being in danger of pulled over by it, personal assistants and physiotherapists. In short, it makes my life a little bit easier after suffering the life-changing devastation two years ago which saw me attempt suicide soon after the finality of my injuries sunk in.

The money I spend on cocktails is the money I earn, at 67, by dragging my broken body out of bed every morning at sunrise, then positioning my halfling-haunches on the couch and turning on my laptop, and using my brain to make my living, the way I’ve done since I was 17.

Yes, sometimes I long to lie a-bed, but I’m glad I don’t when I meet my daily deadline, and when my time comes to leave this mortal coil, I’m pretty sure that my last thoughts won’t be “O, I wish I’d spent more time googling new symptoms that might make me unfit for making my own living!” I’m happy to leave that to others, with their desperate, disparate Desert Island Disabilities.