So I tried with many things from the counter to get rid of it. But the most effective is Salactol Wart Paint (I don't work for these people so no reason to endorse! You can buy it on the internet, I couldn't find it in my pharmacy).
It contains Salicylic Acid which works by blistering the skin. This then bursts the cells open exposing the virus to the immune system which can then kill the virus. Sound principals. However if you have a weakend immune system (and having a long term wart would be a sign of a weak immune system) then your immune system is either worrying about something else or unable to kill it.
The salicyclic acid is very good at getting the wart down to a small size however in the process it makes your finger blistered and sore so you can't tell if your just burning your skin and whether you actually have any wart left or where it might be to put the treatment on it! When you are reducing the size you will go through a phase where your wart looks blood red. This is normal, this is old dried up blood vessels that the wart was using to feed itself.. grim! So keep going with the acid until wart is almost flat.
A good trick I found is to get my mobile device zoom in with the camera and take a picture. You can then zoom in again and take a good look at your wart to see if it looks like normal skin or not.
After about a year of treatement I realised that the wart was not going to die. So I started to use banana skins which was very messy but did help soothe the skin. Then I started using pure virgin coconut oil (it must not be processed otherwise all its healing properties will be lost, again find good sources on internet). I noticed the difference within 30 mins. My skin went all yellow colour over the wart. Bingo I can see it again! I believe this was the coconut oil killing the HPV virus. At the same time I boosted my immune system by taking multivitamins and eating really really well.
Coconut oil is thought to sink deep into the skin and cut the warts roots off so it can no longer get nutrients and dies. Coconut oil is a very good moisturiser and soothes the skin from the acid.
Over the next few weeks I used Salactol at night and oil in the day. You can put the coconut oil in a pot and carry it round with you, it looks white like normal mosituriser so you don't have to get weird looks from people, you can just pretend your moisturising your hands. The oil is very good at softening the skin up and soothing it so that when you put the salactol on at night you don't get any pain in your finger.
As you can see in the picture the skin is still very blistered but you can see finger patterns starting to emerge.
