Radio Phone In

"You're our prank caller" the operator shouted, slamming the phone down. I'd been unmasked!

For a couple of years I had been telephoning a talk radio station, pretending to be various characters. There was a depressive milkman who had a dairy intolerance and a failing marriage. a rock star whose career ended before it began because of drink and drugs, an RAF veteran who saw ghosts and an unlucky man whose pet homing pigeons kept abandoning him.

I found it thrilling as I waited on hold, practising the comedy accent, going over the key points of the story, feeling the adrenaline of stage fright! I got pretty good at it though I must say.

The oddest time was when I telephoned claiming to have been a child chess prodigy who had suffered an infection of the brain. The illness resulted in an inability to play the game whilst having a match perpetually evolve in the back of his mind which he had no choice but observe. I peppered my story with chess moves muttered under my breath, 'knight to queens rook four', and so on. My flat mate Nick then decided to telephone and explain how he had endured an identical experience. After Nick's call the operator asked if he would mind him putting the two of us in touch. Nick hung up and we then received a call giving me Nick's (my) telephone number.

I then 'phoned in pretending to be a Harvard professor who was holidaying in London and had happened to overhear the show. He was anxious to get in touch with the two patients as he was studying this very illness. The operator then telephoned me and Nick in turn, on the same number each time, giving us the professor's (same) number.

I was lying in the bath the next day in our blue bathroom when the telephone rang. It was the producer of the show and she wanted to speak to the professor. She asked him if he might appear as a special guest on that evening's show, provided that they could get the two other callers involved. I agreed and then they telephoned the prodigy but, after a few words, the producer realised that all three of us shared the same telephone number and asked me what was going on, (although it wasn't for another year until they banned me from telephoning in for good).