Overheard
I was waiting in a ticket queue outside white hart lane and overheard two girls chatting. One was a student from Swindon and was telling her mate how she started shagging her boyfriend's dad while he was up in town on business trips. Had been going on for months she said.
I just pretended to read my paper.
(Dom, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 8:47, Reply)

fuckin maccas fuckas!!
i was just at maccas where i bought a cheeseburger.this would be ok but as i was walking away i heard the asshole who gave me the burger say "i just sold that burger to a fat kid in a beanie".now me being the only one in the area in a beanie knew he meant me so i promtly unwrapped the offending article and threw it at him!!

i also overheard some guy some very, very dirty things say to his g/f including,"im gonna groom your pussy with my tounge" and "are we using a video recorder this time?"

1 more...in woolworths (this is australia) i was in the normal express checkout when i heard a small child say to his mum "what were you doing in your room last night with daddy?".anyway a bit later i was walking out of the store when i saw them again emerging from a bookshop with a copy of "where did i come from"!!

edit:another.i heard my bro talking to his freind on the phone when he said"so where excactly did it end up?"!i threw open the door,tripped,fell,and went into uncontrollable fits of laughter.now i am rather large so i ended up rollinh into a bookcase and having a copy of grays anatomy fall on my crotch!just some info...grays anatomy is a fucking huge,7-8 hundred page book made of pure evil and having it fall on mini me bloody hurts!!!!
(That guy with a hat., Fri 11 Jun 2004, 8:46, Reply)

In a crowded Shopping centre
When my Australian wife first came to the UK, we had to go to the Coach station in Hanley, Stoke on Trent to pick her up from her coach from Heathrow.
Hanley has a shopping centre called The Potteries, a 3 or 4 floor building with escalators linking the floors.
As it's a Saturday the shopping centre is quite busy, we are approaching one of the escalators which is crammed with people
Suddenly the escalators grinds to a halt and approximately 60ish people stand perfectly still looking around for inspiration, then my mate shouts at the top of his voice
"Treat them like stairs and try walking!"
The look of sudden realisation on peoples faces was amazing
(Twisted_firestormer, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 8:46, Reply)

overheard in halls of residence
"Ah Saaam I wonna sleep wiv ya"
"Na, darlin', I respect ya too much. ya too drunk!"
"But Saaaam pleeeeeese"

Ah well, it made a change from him at it with some slapper.
(amazingmikeyc internet ninja, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 7:44, Reply)

Feeling slightly dejected
after England crashed out of Euro '96 to Germany, on penalties, I made the long walk home from the pub. A few minutes into my journey, I walked past a house and through the open window heard the immortal line "Oh fuck off, Jimmy Hill"! Made the whole evening worthwhile.
(Really small cheese, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 7:26, Reply)

One phrase, no more...
"The second murder is the hardest"

True story...
(+3 Baroque Vambrace of Icthyology, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 7:23, Reply)

here in OZ...
there's an ongoing spat between two high profile radio announcers, Alan and John; formerly colleagues, now competitors.
Alan is suspected of being a mouthpiece of the government in return for lenient treatment over other commercial matters he's involved with.
Recently, a government minister sent Alan a very supportive personal fax on government letterhead. Trouble was, she sent it to his old employer, where arch enemy John still worked.
Needless to say, the whole of Australia overheard that little conversation!
( woowoowoo, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 5:43, Reply)

Oh and there's also loud folks at the movies
I was extremely bored (EXTREMELY), bored enough to go see Mary Reilly in the theater (you know, the one where Julia Roberts is Dr. Jekyll's maid. Riveting stuff). Please don't ridicule me, as I have already self-flagellated in penance. Last fifteen minutes of the film, old woman next to me exclaims loudly to her friend, "Ohhhhh [as if finally understanding something that has been eluding her for a long time]! Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the SAME PERSON!" I'm concerned that she needed to go see a Julia Roberts film to learn that piece of pop trivia.

My friend John saw 28 Days Later here in the States and among the gems from the people in front were:

A: What are those?
B: Shopping carts [aka trolleys].
A: Oh. They have those in England, too?

EDIT: Yes, these are dumb American stories, and there are lots of dumb Americans out there. But there's also lots of dumb Britons too! Don't get all upset- we're all a bunch of fucking dumb assholes together in a multicultural unity sort of way...
(Mabel DelTaco, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 5:39, Reply)

Temp receptionist: nearly the bottom of the foodchain
Maybe this isn't very funny, but when you're temping as a morning receptionist at the most boring plastics factory in the world, you take your laughs where you can. A woman called and asked to be transferred to someone. She must have thought I had her on hold. I didn't. I had her right up to my ear as my bottom-feeding, amoebic temp eyes desperately searched for the extension on the switchboard. I heard some bickering in the background, then the previously polite woman reaming someone out in a foreign language. And then, in the split second between seeing the extension and instinctively transferring the call, I heard "Get on the phone and make some sales, goddamn it!"

Not much, but like I said. If you worked all morning in a plastics factory you'd find it funny too.
(Mabel DelTaco, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 5:29, Reply)

a good mate of mine
was discussing marijuana pipes in a bar with some friends, and what one he was going to buy. One friend said he should get a glass one, to which he replied "my mate Ade has got this metal one thats really good". The bar was really noisy though, so my friend asked him to repeat it. So he says slightly louder "my friend, Ade, hes got a really cool one!". Friend goes, "sorry mate, i couldnt hear you again, speak up" at which point my mate shouts at him (and at which point the whole bar goes completely silent) "I SAID AIDS IS COOL, YOU FUCKING DEAF CUNT!!!"

Laugh, i almost had a seizure...
( PMGT -Bacon., Fri 11 Jun 2004, 5:05, Reply)

Hang up the Phone First
I used to be a debt collector for a month or so (they fired me cause I was too nice). But my boss told me about a time he'd called a woman to collect a debt. He didn't get anywhere, but apparently she did, as she didn't hang up the phone. The woman then proceeded to have passionate and apparently VERY loud sex. My boss heard it all.
(Anne Packrat Staunch Heliocentrist, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 4:30, Reply)

Shorty
Three or four times I've overheard one boy at my school saying the phraise "Nipples and chains." I haven't misheard anything. I don't dare ask what the context was.
(Luna loves you., Fri 11 Jun 2004, 4:11, Reply)

I love thin walls in University Halls
After a particularly alcoholic Friday night out, a group of my friends and I staggered back into the Halls of Residence we lived in.

Chatting quietly out in the coridoor for a bit, we realised that we could hear our one solitary friend who hadn't gone out in his room with his rather owlish girlfriend, both of them giggling.

Figuring that they were doing the dirty, we stopped talking to listen a little more closely. The giggling continued, but was now joined by the sound of rattling.

After a minute or so of confusion, I realised that the rattling sound was nothing kinky, but actually Dice being shaken, and they were not shagging, but in fact playing Yahtzee.

Although this realisation pretty much reduced us all to near-silent tears of laughter, we did all agree that if we were in his position, we'd also rather have played Yahtzee with her than actually be subjected to slipping her a length.
(Glis, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 3:51, Reply)

One time while hanging about an internet message board...
..I overheard all these stories about American tourists.

The tellers of the stories were attempting to paint the entire American population as uneducated, xenophobic fools who are ignorant of how other countries work.

The funny thing is that they simply showed up their own uneducated, xenophobic tendencies by stereotyping an entire nation based on encounters with a couple of stupid tourists.

Well... it made me laugh.
( Mystery_Bob, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 3:50, Reply)

I remember this one time...
when i was riding a bus home I overheard these two girls speaking about what they have done with their boyfriends, im not gonna name any specifics but, i will say i am never going to shack with a red head...... i hate being handcuffed.....
(MasterWankShake, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 2:48, Reply)

Radio Shack social justice vigilantes.
I once worked for a few years at a Radio Shack store in the mid to late 80s: business had become quiet ever since the new supermall had opened a couple of miles away with its own RS and we found ourselves with a lot of idle time during the afternoon periods.

One of my friends who also worked there was a fantastic electronic tinker: when bored, he would routinely open up the various boxes of electronic gadgetry and tweak them for improved performance. Many a customer must have received a pleasant surprise when they found their two way radio sets now had an operational range of five miles instead of the advertised and FCC-limited one thousand yards; or when they opened up their new Pro-34 programmable multiband radio scanner and discovered it was several orders more sensitive as well as capable of accessing all the supposedly locked out cellphone and private police frequencies. We would keep one of the modified Pro-34s as a display unit and during slow periods set it to scan for interesting conversations over the supposedly private airwaves.

One afternoon we were listening to cellphone dialups and my friend was idly writing down the phone numbers being called: prior to the modern network system the touch tones were still in use and it was child's play for him to identify telephone numbers from their tone frequencies. We usually just tossed the numbers in the garbage as the calls themselves were relatively harmless: dope dealers discussing their latest hauls or a couple of punks discussing which of their friends they were going to rip off that afternoon. One evening, however, we came across a call which drove us to action.

The radio locked onto the phone call as the carrier went high, so the phone number was easy to capture: it was a fairly innocuous sounding discussion between an overworked businessman and his wife, who asked him to come home to dinner and spend some time with the kids and his repeated refusal to show up soon, citing a huge backlog of extra paperwork to get through before closing on some important deal. With a resigned sigh, she relented and told him she would try to keep things warm upon his return, whereupon she hung up.

The radio did not resume scanning: this could only mean the guy on the other end had kept carrier high in order to dial another number. Quickly perking up, my friend hit the lock button to keep the scanner from drifting after this particular session and hurriedly jotted down the number being dialed and leaned in towards the scanner's loudspeaker. When the answer came, it was the sound of a young lady asking who was calling. The businessman identified himself to her whereupon she expressed great pleasure with his call, followed quickly by his saying, "I'll be right over, honey." The carrier dropped at that point. We stared at the now softly hissing scanner, then almost simultaneously looked at each other and said, "Bastard!"

It took us a few minutes to decide on a plan of action: as I seem to have a talent for turning a wrong number call into a full conversation I dialed the number of the housewife and, quickly explaining that this was not a wrong number I adamantly tried to convince her to call up the other phone number in a half hour's time and keep calling until someone answered, then ask for her husband to come to the phone. I quickly explained our "accidental" eavesdropping and said such a wonderful sounding lady did not deserve to be treated in this manner. I never knew what happened afterwards but she thanked me and hung up. This happened about sixteen years ago before the vaunted "caller ID" systems were widely implemented so we did not fear any sort of reprisals along those lines: in today's world it seems accidental SMS and email address errors reveal far more indiscretions any airwave vigilantes could hope to equal.
( Felis Concolor, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 2:07, Reply)

@ Enigmatic
Enigmatic, how about posting a reply that's not lifted, almost word-for-word, from the Ultimate Book Of Pub Jokes?
( Bob Todd whee, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 1:43, Reply)

Portable Phones
My dads old portable radio used to tune a bit too far above the top of the dial, this meant that if you tuned right to the top of MW you could hear one of the frequencies used by the old analogue portable phones. Whats more this was one switch press of our local FM station

Much to my amusement it seemed that a family in the next road had their phone on this frequency. During my occasional eavesdropping (I was unemployed, living with my parents and bored) I normally got wa sable to hear the minuteai of family life being discussed, until one evening when the daughter of the house was having a conversation about how she was pregnant, but scared to tell her parents.

The pressure of being only 1 of 3 people who knew about this was too much and I never listened again
(Scary, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 1:14, Reply)

At work the other night.
(Note:Dan overheard)

We're allowed to listen to music at work on headphones from walkmans etc. On our desk is Emma, Dan and myself. It was coming up to the break and Dan and I had been talknig about pubs. We were half arranging a get together with each other's mates in various pubs. Apparently I'm posh as I live in a better area of this shit hole, a number of miles from where Dan lives. I turn to look at Dan as we're talking and see Emma taking her ear phones out. As soon as she starts Dan says "Yeah, I'll have to come up your end one day". Emma's face was priceless, I pissed myself laughing, as did Emma, and left Dan trying to explain saying things like "I mean I'll have to visit a pub that you go to sometime" etc...
(Vega31, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 0:55, Reply)

In a cafe somewhere in Europe
a friend overheard a German couple and an American couple.

German woman sneezes. German man says "Gesundheit".

American woman spins around and says "Thank GOD! Finally, someone who speaks English!"
( HairyCanary as Ann B. Davis as Alice, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 0:53, Reply)

I used to work for the government
So if I told you I'd have to kill you.

Our government. . . not yours.
( faithy, Fri 11 Jun 2004, 0:42, Reply)

Gypo Jesters
A couple of friends of mine were taking a leisurely stroll along the local river.

They came across a bunch of traveller kids (gypsies, pikies, pavies, worthless scum...whatever) walking along the opposite riverbank, probably fleeing the scene of a crime.
Unprovoked, one of the kids shouted out -

"I fucked your ma last night, you should of seen the blood 'what' came out of her gee".*

They really have an eloquent way with words.....

* to be read in the thickest, muck savage, Irish accent imaginable
(Smell eep!, Thu 10 Jun 2004, 23:52, Reply)

overheard someone overhearing
on a train back from wonderful london i was unfortunate to sit across the aisle from some woman who was in theatre or something. anyway she was a total snob and happened to be in the buffet car when i was. she asked for a cup of tea, but could they not put the tea bag in?
"so you want hot water then?"
"yah, yah darling"

but anyway she was on the phone to one of her mates talking about work, just as some drunken rugby fans were making their way back to their seats after stocking up on wifebeater. so anyways stupid hot water woman says
"honestly though, adam garcia is SUCH a babe!"
to which this bloke loudly hollers
"is he? TOSSER!"
which made my journey.
(cap'nj, Thu 10 Jun 2004, 23:38, Reply)

Libellous?
I managed to be 'lucky' enough to be a barman at Milton Keynes Theatre a few years back; apart from the usual bar work and ushering people to thier seats, i also used to work on the after show parties....

Whilst working quite late on one particular show's first night party in a private function room, it's star (at the time) one Mr. Christopher Biggins walks in with the theatre's manager (i better not reveal names... Even though he was a twat) laughing and joking.

they sit down on a sofa and i go to serve them drinks, where i hear the tail end of this conversation.... And this is the god's honest truth:

Biggins: ... "Yeah, i've found that the shape often helps, not much need for lubrication, you see."
Manager: "Yeah, i've always preferred Pepsi's bottles to be honest. i can get it so..."

they then both realised i was standing a mere 4ish feet away and stopped very abruptly, whilst i struggled to maintain my composure whilst offering a glass coke, haha!...
The manager didn't really talk to me much after that... haha.

Mr.K
(Colostomy Bag Explosion Lubing the gears of commercialism, Thu 10 Jun 2004, 23:33, Reply)

stupid chavs
picture it, on a bus.. a small group of idiots towards the back have given you a 7 minute rendition of 'skater boi' by avril lavigne. i was pretty restless at the time, was quite late.. wanted to get home.

then we passed a small cafe alongside the road.

"ahh, that guy opens at like 7am, i mean who eats at 7? what a fuckin twat"

"yeah, if he just opened like 2 hours later, he'd save loadsa money"

"cos like electricity is like fuckin 17p an hour or something, so thats like 34p a day"

"and 365 times 34 is like.."

at this point, the mens brains slowed to a crawl, clearly perplexed over the equation, it seems as if they would have to resort to shoes and socks off for extra digits.. stunted mumbling later, the end result was about three thousand pounds past the answer.. i can't even fathom how they reached that..
(dowboy, Thu 10 Jun 2004, 23:15, Reply)

In Australia during the last Ashes
I was staying in Adelaide in the same hotel as the England cricket team. I shared a lift with Nassar Hussain and over head him discussing who was going to be out through injury and who was going to replace him.

Wish I'd though about it at the time and placed a bet on it.
(saurbaum, Thu 10 Jun 2004, 22:59, Reply)

Kid's Stuff
While on the bus to school when I wad about 8 or nine I remember a little boy being cheeky to his mother and generally misbehaving. His mother slapped his leg and said 'Wait till your Father hears how naughty you've been today!' 'Well!' says the naughty boy loudly, 'I'll tell me dad you wee'd in the mop bucket' Mother and child made a hasty exit at the next stop to guffaws from the rest of the bus'
( Marillion's Marble Loo loo loo, I got some apples, Thu 10 Jun 2004, 22:55, Reply)

I 'overheard' some bloke shout...
"Don't fuck with me, i'll shave your mum!"

It's now my favourite put down as people have no idea what to reply to it with.
(Dustjunky, Thu 10 Jun 2004, 22:45, Reply)

A friend of mine was coming back from Australia to the UK. As he went up an escalator towards the security gates, he passed two Australians coming down the other one away from arrivals. As they passed, he heard one say to the other:

"...so there's these two dyslexic gay policemen who own an animal sanctuary..."

and he never saw them again. He's spent the last four years trying to reconstruct the punchline.
( Cromagnon Don't waste my motherfucking time!, Thu 10 Jun 2004, 22:45, Reply)