by Belinda
As she listened through the messages, keen to hear whether any of their friends or colleagues had been able to get through, it became clear that her mystery caller worked near a company's switchboard. She could hear people answering telephones with: 'Good Morning, Superglaze,' in the background.
Sarah looked them up in the phone book and discovered they were a large glazing and double-glazing company. A simple complaint to the management for timewasting and blocking their answerphone tape didn't seem like much fun and Sarah and Mike felt like a little light revenge.
Sarah put on her best plummy voice and asked to speak to the chairman or managing director. She introduced herself as Jane Tompkinson, PA to the chairman of British Telecom. Could she, she asked, arrange a high level meeting to discuss a large contract that they were putting out to tender? She could hear the growing excitement amongst the staff and the general manager was fawning and ingratiating as he asked whether 'Jane' could divulge the nature of the contract. 'Jane' replied that at this stage it was highly confidential but was he familiar with the Telecom Tower? Sarah could almost hear the champagne corks popping.
After a suitable interval Mike and Sarah came clean to the now bitterly disappointed general manager and left him to deal with Mike's ardent fan.
A well-known re-insurance broker, tired of his girlfriend's infidelity, had call-cards made up bearing her telephone number and a voluptuous description of her. Then he put them in twenty telephone boxes in and around Soho.
Derek Nimmo was invited to host a 24-hour charity telethon in Auckland, New Zealand. Having flown there at his own expense, he was particularly dismayed to be greeted at his hotel by a somewhat hostile Barry Christiansen, Collector of Taxes, who, in a most uncharitable manner, was demanding an outstanding payment dating back over five years. Feeling extremely jet-lagged and more than a little nervous about the forthcoming marathon programme, he asked if Mr Christiansen would s mind contacting him the following day. This was not to be. Mr Christiansen dogged him at every turn, eventually popping up at the TV studio.
Enough was enough - Derek Nimmo, before going on air, looked up Barry Christiansen's name in the telephone directory and, as the many pledges were coming in, announced that a most charming man by the name of Barry Christiansen at the following telephone number had promised that, for every person who telephoned him within the next six hours, he would donate $20 to the cause.
When she found out her boyfriend was being unfaithful, a certain lady let herself into his flat one Friday and dialled the speaking clock... in New York. One can only imagine his face when he returned on the Sunday, found the telephone off the hook, picked it up and worked out why the time and the accent were wrong.
Morocco is a country where the wealthiest families live in stunning, interior-designed homes, think nothing of nipping to Paris for a little gentle shopping, and the women are sweet to each other - until their backs are turned.
One of these beautifully-groomed ladies needed to get her own back on another. She telephoned her, putting on her best Italian accent and said that she was from Italian Vogue and wanted to send a photographer and writer to do a feature on her house, garden and friends. Would she please have a ladies' lunch party which would be photographed for the feature? The date was agreed.
Anticipation of the event was feverish: ten women working out what to wear, how to have their hair done, when to arrive... and the hostess went wild, having the house spring cleaned, ordering imported fresh flowers and the finest foods: the best of everything that money could buy.
The great day came, the women assembled in a cloud of perfume and designer clothes. The hostess became a little uneasy as time marched on and the Vogue team had not shown up, but she was greatly reassured when the telephone rang and the Italian voice assured them that the team was on its way but do start lunch.
History doesn't relate when the penny finally dropped nor the humiliation suffered by the hostess.
Many years ago in a lovely house overlooking the Hamble River, a man became aware that his pretty wife was, once again, involved in a long and lovey-dovey telephone conversation with her lover. Time to act, he thought as he grabbed his car keys.
He knew that his adversary would be in the telephone box on the village green so he drove slowly to the box and reversed up against the door so that it could not be opened. With that he got out, locked the car and disappeared for the day.
Corinna Liddell was amongst a party of beautiful people at Tramp. She was with her boyfriend but this did not stop another member of the party from flirting with her all the time and, whenever her boyfriend went off to the loo or to dance with someone, he would home in on her and pester her for her telephone number. Gilbert badgered her over and over and just would not give up so, finally, she leaned towards him, rested her chin on her hand, looked into his eyes and oh, so sweetly recited a telephone number.
It made her laugh every time she imagined him trying to call her. She had given him the telephone number of an extremely graphic recorded message outlining the causes, symptoms and medical procedures for venereal diseases.
Culinary Capers
'Revenge - a dish that should be eaten cold.'
King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, 1787
Culinary Capers
Nowadays, if you order a pizza from a pizzeria which delivers, they insist on taking your telephone number and, usually, call you back to confirm. However, before they got wise to it, it was possible to order a pizza to be delivered to an address without the recipient ever knowing who was responsible. A very respectable American lady tells of how strangely ungracious her ex-boyfriend was to receive and have to pay for a huge pizza (with extra peppers and anchovies) at 2 a.m. when he was in the throes of passion with his new girlfriend.
According to Dee Knight, her husband John was unbelievably mean with the housekeeping and wouldn't even give her money for food. Dee sold her jewellery to buy food for them and her daughter but even then John complained about the cooking. When he walked out after thirteen months of marriage Dee took her revenge before she moved to her new flat.
First stop was the local cash and carry where she spent £300. Then to the local fish shops followed by visits to all the shops that sold paddling pools in St Brelade, Jersey. Then she returned to the marital home and prepared a three-course meal that her soon-to-be ex-husband would not forget.
She blew up the fifteen pools and placed them around the house. In the spare room she filled one with three
hundred cans of chicken soup. Another in the couple's bedroom she filled with twenty-four rotting prawns and fifty stinking fish heads. On the landing another contained festering fish guts topped up with tinned tomatoes. She filled up two pools in the sitting room with 180 pounds of mashed potato and a further four she filled with gravy. Other pools contained two dozen apples, with a gallon of custard and another contained 1,322 stewing tea-bags.
It took Dee a week to prepare and the one thing she was unhappy with was the custard: 'Because it has lumps in it, but I just hope one goes down the wrong way.' Dee added, 'By the time he finds the mess the stench will be unbearable. The beauty of using paddling pools is that once they are full they are impossible to move without everything slopping out, and if they start to deflate there will be an even bigger mess!'
An aristocratic landowner was tired of providing endless hospitality every weekend for the same bunch of ungrateful 'friends' and decided it was time to get his own back. He telephoned them all and asked them to come and stay, and received a chorus of 'Oh rather!' and 'Goody!' They all showed up on the Friday night.
After dinner on the Saturday night: a delicious repast with plenty of champagne and fine claret, their host proposed that they play a game. 'Splendid!', 'Absolutely marvellous, good show!' brayed the assembled company. Their host informed them that he had bought a number of goodies from Asprey and there would be prizes for everyone: it was a sort of a treasure hunt and, just to make it a little different and more exciting, why didn
't they all have their ankles shackled together so that everyone could find the prize at the same time? What a riot, they all agreed and they were duly shackled by the butler.
What they had not been told was that the cook had prepared two quite separate meals, one for the host and another for the guests - the latter having been liberally laced with laxative. Our host had the most entertaining evening as the stricken guests alternately had to dive into bushes, pulling with them the rest of the guests to witness their discomfort.
Every time she discovered that her husband had been cheating on her, a woman made him a curry - with tinned dog meat. 'He hadn't a clue and I still chuckle when I think of him tucking in. I would tell him he was my PAL, or a real CHUM, as he chomped on the doggy dinner.'
Eminent violinist and musician Jack Rothstein, who is a great wit and raconteur, tells of the musicians in Billy Cotton's band who used to tour the country. To save on costs they would stay in bed-and-breakfast accommodation for around £3.10s a week, which included a light meal in the evening after the show.
They were staying near Liverpool and two of them who were sharing a room decided that a bottle of sherry would brighten up the landlady's standard offering of corned beef salad, trifle and tea, so they duly bought a bottle and had a couple of drinks each. The following evening, they took out their bottle and thought that the level seemed to have dropped - so they put a marker on it to see if someone else was drinking it. Sure enough, the next evening the level was well below their mark.
They decided to put a stop to this by finishing the bottle and replacing the contents with their own pee. The next night, they were horrified to see that the level had fallen again and on the final night a great deal went
missing. They did, however, have a jolly good laugh trying to envisage their victim and the effect that their beverage would be having on him or her.
As they were settling up with the landlady, she asked whether they had had a nice time.
'Yes,' they replied, 'but you had better be careful. We think you might have a thief here.'
'How so?' she asked, much agitated and they explained about the falling sherry level.
'Oh,' she smiled, 'don't worry about it. It was me. I was only using it to make your trifle.'
JojoLeatham was angry. Her husband Mark had had far too much brandy at a dinner party the night before and she felt he deserved every bit of his evil hangover. She had heard him crash around the room at 4 a.m. rattling the last of the Nurofen and madly trying to rehydrate. The following morning she was in the kitchen and one of the children was sent down to 'ask Mummy for something for my headache.' He innocently swallowed the two sleeping pills she sent up to him. They had a large lunch party that day and he couldn't understand why his head kept falling in the soup.
We are told that American TV chat show host Tom Snyder was interviewing a lovely young actress on his show some years ago. It was fairly obvious that his interest in her was more than just professional and she, consequently, became very uncomfortable. Nevertheless, when he invited her out to dinner a couple of days later she accepted with great pleasure and suggested an unbelievably expensive restaurant that she would like to try. He duly booked a table but she, apparently, telephoned the restaurant and changed the reservation to a table for
twelve and invited ten of her friends. It is much to his credit that he had the good grace to pay for them all.
Kerry Packer had had a long day playing polo at Windsor and it is rumoured that he, along with a party of ten players and others arrived back at Midhurst, tired and hungry. It was about ten o'clock at night and Packer wanted to buy supper for the group so they found a restaurant whose lights were on and went in. They were refused a table: the kitchens were closing, sorry, they'd have to go somewhere else. They went along to a second establishment where the request was similarly greeted with refusal. The proprietress of the third restaurant was unwilling at first to serve a large party when everyone else was just leaving but eventually agreed, saying that they could rustle up some steak and chips - she'd just go and get her husband out of bed.
After a delicious supper and a few bottles of wine, Kerry Packer asked for the bill which was duly presented. He allegedly handed over a cheque for £10,000, which was conditional on their showing it to the owners of the two other restaurants which had turned him down. A number of restaurants in and around Midhurst have since put up signs saying: 'Kerry Packer Welcome Here'.
Phillip Seldon was the founding editor of Vintage magazine and published it for seventeen years. Self-publicist, Marvin Shanken, publishes rival magazine Wine Spectator. Shanken booked a table at the very expensive Bouley restaurant in New York City and wrote a report of his meal in Wine Spectator trashing the restaurant, criticising it for keeping him waiting for his table and for poor service.
A piece about his report subsequently appeared in the gossip column of the New York Post, one of New York's biggest papers, and Phillip Seldon decided to act. He sent a letter to the letters page of the New York Post, saying how a restaurant needs more than good food to be successful; it needs ambience and beautiful people. It went on to say that Marvin Shanken is fat and ugly and deserved to be mistreated. The New York Post printed the letter.
Dai Llewellyn was very proud of his brand new Lancia. It was parked, all gleaming and new, outside a well-known restaurant while he and a few friends had dinner. They were the last to leave and, on returning to the car, found a dozen bin bags full of restaurant rubbish piled against it. Mr Llewellyn asked the waiters to move them and they refused. A heated argument followed, during which the rubbish was emptied into the car. Dai's old Harrovian friend sloped off, complaining of a bad back, leaving Dai and two girls to sort matters out with six, burly waiters. Fighting broke out and, eventually, Dai, battered and bruised, conceded the unequal struggle. He decided to get his own back and hit them in the pocket where it hurt.
Over the next few weeks he completely booked the restaurant out several times with false bookings, taking enormous pleasure in adopting different accents, making elaborate bookings for fictitious peers of the realm; taking tables for business functions; booking a party of twelve for his wife's birthday (complete with personalised cake); ordering special menus for overseas visitors; making bookings with intricate details and additions. He would only stop when the restaurant refused a booking saying: 'Sorry, Sir, there are no tables available: we are completely full tonight.'
Surprisingly, the restaurant is still going twenty years on, and both parties are the best of friends.
'I was very interested in a famous and very powerful man but, stupidly, went and introduced him to a well-known widow. Mistake. The next thing I knew they had arranged lunch together at Mosimans. I know the people there very well and worked out the couple's timings -they would be arriving at one-ish, have an aperitif, and by around 1.45 p.m. they would be mellow and relaxed...
I arranged for a single white rose to be delivered at that time, with a note that read: "Why play the fiddle when you can have a Stradivarius?" A couple of friends were positioned in the restaurant at tables nearby to witness the scene and testified that her face fell a mile and he went bright red. It achieved its objective: she never talked to me again. But he did. Definitely!'
- with many thanks to writer Mona Bauwens.
'A new and dazzling Soho brasserie opened in the early Eighties and a friend of mine suggested we eat there. So it was that, one hot summer's day, we found ourselves sitting by the window enjoying a pre-prandial drink, waiting for a roast beef salad. It duly arrived, looking very beautiful with its fashionable, designer leaves and, without further ado, we dug in. Simon speared a tomato and was just about to pop it in his mouth when he stopped and turned deathly pale. He was trembling - I truly thought he was having a heart attack. Indicating his plate he revealed the source of his pallor: a huge black spider was residing in his lunch. It turned my stomach too - you don't expect to find arachnids in your entrées.
'As the seconds passed I b
egan to have doubts - it
really was improbably large. Closer scrutiny revealed that it was, in fact, plastic. We called the restaurant manager and asked him to explain matters and he assumed it was our little joke. We assured him that we had not put it there ourselves - and how could we possibly fake the colour of poor Simon's face? He disappeared to investigate.
'A quarter of an hour later he reappeared with a trembling sous-chef who admitted the whole thing. He had chosen the recipient at random. The stress and strain of a top London kitchen and the demands of the punters had got to him and he had popped under the pressure. He had bought the spider a few days previously, carried it around in his pocket, and just couldn't resist the temptation any longer - this was chef's revenge. How was he to know that it would land up on the table of the restaurant critic for Harpers and Queen?’
- with thanks to TV personality and restaurant critic, Loyd Grossman.
The two girls who were engaged to the same man discovered each other's existence simultaneously. Rather than punishing each other, they decided to be thoroughly grown-up and controlled about it all and direct their revenge at him. The blonde telephone him: 'Darling,' she said, 'let's have a romantic lunch, just the two of us. See you at The Buck's Club at one.'