MY colleague Denis Kilcommons nips over to Ireland regularly and finds Ryanair a boon.

I don’t. I think cheap flight airlines in general, and Ryanair in particular, have entered an extremely unpleasant phase of their existence.

Their fares may appear low, but they sting you from the moment you pay by debit or credit card, as many of us do nowadays.

Each transaction carries a £5 to £15 surcharge.

One bag per person used to go free into the hold. Not any more. This now costs you on average £10 a bag.

Heaven help you if one of those bags is slightly over £15 kilos.

Ryanair boss MIchael O’Leary has put forward a number of spurious publicity ideas, including charging people for using the plane loos, or taking seats out so make room for standing passengers.

At least, I think they’re publicity-grabbing and spurious. ‘Which’ magazine isn’t convinced, and has marked Ryanair as the “baddest of a bad bunch.”

I was shocked to find a tiny bottle of still water on Ryanair cost £2.59, and that a dull menu of cheeseburgers on polystyrene set the couple next to me back £10.

I suppose that if we want to get cheaply to the Continent and back, we have to put up with these short-haul shenanigans.

I have a suspicion that the bubble of cheap flights is about to burst, anyway, and the ones to suffer most will be the people who bought airport-handy second homes all over Europe.