I am no good around money. I don't mean that I would prefer to avoid money, or that I am afraid of it. Nothing of the sort. I am no chrematophobe. Not I.

If I were a contestant on Fear Factor, I would not hesitate to balance on a tightrope suspended over a pit filled with money. Lock me in a small room and send currency whirling unexpectedly through the air vents, and I will hardly turn a hair. If I were to pull on my trousers of a morning and discover that a couple of banknotes had crawled up the legs to seek warmth from the chill night air, you would not hear me shriek.

So, no, I have no aversion to money. I would go so far as to say that when it comes to money, I am an enthusiast. I am even planning to start my own collection.

What I mean to say is that I am no good when it comes to working with money. Some people understand money as a living organism, with its own logic and life cycle. Some people can feel the particular rhythm inside money, and allow money its own momentum and follow as it leads them to still more money, as the quickening river leads you to the sea. Not me. I cycle through alternating parabola of hoarding and spending, interrupted only by alternating parabola of spending and spending.

'They still have to rendezvous with Irene Bester'

I do not let my money work for me. "No money of mine is going to work!" I thunder. "Not while I am the head of this house!"

I expect my money to relax and put its feet up during the day, and be waiting for me when I come home. I am old-fashioned, that way.

Every so often I pay various gentlemen to come to my home and explain the state of my finances and advise how best to improve things, but when they do I sit there feeling like an illiterate Sicilian peasant farmer with a large moustache when the men from the government come around with their clipboards. They rattle on about dividends and hedges and annuities, and I watch their lips move and think about supper. When they are finished, all I can think of saying is: "But do I have enough to feed my goats this winter?"

For me, the Sanlam Money Game (SABC3, Thursdays at 8.30pm) is a scarier version of Fear Factor. It incorporates two of my deepest phobias. Not only do you have to work against time and with your money in order to grow that money, but you have to do it by talking to strangers.

Each week, three contestants are left in an isolated location with a fixed amount of cash, and have three days before they must rendezvous with Irene Bester. Whoever has used their seed money to make the most profit wins. But they still have to rendezvous with Irene Bester.

'It froze the blood just to watch it'

This past week we met David, Pieter and Marlene. The first thing Marlene did with her seed money was buy herself some cosmetics and check into a comfy guest house. Now that is the kind of entrepreneurial spirit I understand. Marlene contented herself with buying cycads in Pholokeng, or somewhere, and reselling them in Johannesburg. David and Pieter had altogether more shady schemes up their sleeves. First Pieter was paid R5 000 by some roadside computer company to clean their billboard with a bucket of soapy water and a cloth. Then David scooped a couple of thousand by scrubbing a single portable toilet for a local company specialising in the hire of, well, portable toilets.

How can this be, you ask? Why did no one pay you several thousand rands, the last time you were on hands and knees in a portable toilet with a scouring pad?

Well, it was never spelled out on screen, but I would suspect the reason is that you were not being followed by a camera crew filming you for a national television show. Clearly, the boys were selling ad space. "I'll be washing your sign," Pieter must have said, "so they'll have no choice but to show your company name."

A word of commendation to the skills of the nameless cameraman who, with swoops and swirls and zooms and sudden pans, managed to show Pieter climbing a ladder propped against the sign, show Pieter washing the sign, even show Pieter pointing proudly at the sign - all without showing the sign itself.

I still don't know which company it was.

If there is a second series of the Sanlam Money Game (and there should be, because it's fun), I would like to see how far the contestants get trying those tricks again.

David won, I think, unless it was Pieter. Besides their cleaning scams, they were a constant blur of deals and negotiations and cold-calling.

It froze the blood just to watch it. The thought of going out into the world in that way to live upon my wits and the grace of strangers makes me jerk awake in the night whimpering but unable to remember the nightmare.

David managed to weasel his way into the 702 Talk Radio studios to raise publicity around some of his money-making schemes.

"But why should anyone pay money to help you? What's in it for us?" demanded Gareth Cliff, very sensibly, and in his voice echoed all the doubts and fears that resound in my own head when I think of my place in the world.

I am no entrepreneur. I panic at the thought of introducing myself to strangers. Should circumstances change and I can no longer make a living from the safety of my sofa, I suspect I would find the world very dark and chilly indeed.

I mentioned these fears to a friend of mine. "Well, perhaps you should start arranging your finances properly," he said. I thought about that. "You know, you are right," I said, reaching for another bourbon. "One of these days I am going to do just that."