First the Millennium Bug. Now this.

I am writing these words in advance and hoping that, between now and when they are due to get on to the press, the world hasn’t experienced what it seems to have been gearing up for, these last few weeks, which is Armageddon.

I am not talking about Donald Trump and his North Korean counterparts throwing their rattles at each other, although that isn’t necessarily going to end well, either.

My current concern is the implementation of the new General Data Protection Regulation, which anybody who uses email must now be sick to the back teeth of.

It’s ironic that something that is supposed to console us by stopping countless businesses bombarding us with unwanted stuff has actually caused every firm we have ever done business with to email us, begging for permission to store our personal details in their files.

It was like the world was coming to an end last Friday.

I suppose GDPR will make some large firms hesitate before doing the wrong thing, but not for long. The richer ones will surely find some loophole or other that allows them to carry on regardless, like they always do.

In the meantime, all the small fish, including many I liked being in touch with, have been losing sleep over how it is going to affect them.

Every little organisation from Hells Angels chapters to nudist clubs have had to review their procedures and try to work out what they are and aren’t allowed to do with your data, and I detect a huge amount of wringing of hands as people who just want to get on with things try to get to grips with it all.

A friend of mine, who is a dab-hand at all things internet, described his customers as going into ‘GDPRmageddon’ as the deadline approached, not unlike we did in 1999.

Remember all the talk that year about the Millennium Bug? By New Year’s Eve the hype was telling us we had better party because it was odds-on we would wake up to find somebody’s computer had accidentally launched a nuclear weapon.

In the event, apart from a bunch of programmers earning enough money from the scaremongering to buy fleets of ocean-going yachts, nothing happened.

In the same way that we wondered what all the fuss was about, I would love to know what benefits GDPR will ultimately provide for the likes of you and me.

Before the whole palaver began, all you had to do in order to prevent businesses filling your inbox was to politely ask to be unsubscribed.

It took seconds and, in my experience, they always obliged, because most businesses have realised that annoying you with spam is the quickest way to lose your custom.

So GDPR may have done nothing more than save us from another Millennium Bug, but somehow I don’t expect life will change much, and I know what will happen, starting tomorrow.

About 12.30pm I will get my lunch out of the oven, but before I can raise a fork to my mouth, the phone will ring. If I answer it, there will be silence for a telltale couple of seconds before a man with an Asian accent, but strangely calling himself Simon or Martin, will come on.

After asking me if I am Mr Carter, he will tell me something about a survey I can’t remember completing, and how he is offering me a discount on a mobile phone I don’t want to buy.

And everything that really bugs us about life in this millennium will carry on, just as before.