» Misunderstood

Prontaprint, mate ...
Another phone story from a while back:

A few months after the previous story, a fairly bemused looking chap waltzes in, gives me a cheery smile and whips out his new Nokia camera phone, as sold to him the very same morning by my colleague, who chose that very moment to "have a tidy up in the stockroom".

"Nice phone innit?", he asks.
"Yes, very," I say, "so what can I do for you?"
"Well," he replies, "I've got the hang of most of the stuff ..." He then proceeds to demonstrate various features to me, such as the phonebook, radio, etc "... but there's just one thing I can't work out."
"What's that?" I ask him.
"This is a camera phone, right?"
"Yes ...", I say.
"... so where does the film go?"

It's all I can do at this point not to burst out laughing.

"There IS no film, it's a digital camera", i tell him.
"Oh," he says. "What does that mean?"
So I explain to him the difference between a digital camera and one that uses film.
"Riiiight ..." he says, seeming to grasp the concept now. "... so where do I get it developed?"
(Sun 9th Oct 2005, 23:37, More)

» Misunderstood

You've got my number ... why don't you use it?
I work for a well-known high street mobile phone retailer. No, not those ones.

Anyway, a couple of years ago I sold this guy a new mobile and, after I'd explained all the ins and outs of his chosen handset, he left the shop a happy man. Until about a week later, when he storms back in, slams his shiny new phone down on the counter and starts laying into me with a venomous verbal assault.

"This f***ing phone isn't working!", "You f***ing twat, you delberately sold me a broken phone!", etc. I finally manage to calm him down and assure him that I don't get my kicks by deliberately flogging faulty merchandise to unsuspecting punters, and glean from him that the problem with said phone is that it won't receive any phonecalls.

So I pull his information from the computer, look up the phone number I'd assigned to him and give it a call. The phone springs into life, bleating out the theme from The Great Escape and steadily vibrating it's way across the desk toward my coffee cup. The bloke's astounded.

"How the f*** did you do that?", he asks. Turns out he'd forgotten to tell people his new phone number.
(Sun 9th Oct 2005, 23:22, More)

» Heckles

Apologies for length ...
Popular beat combo Feeder seem to have a knack for choosing shit support bands - one such unfortunate choice was Utah Saints, supporting the band at the Birmingham Academy about five years ago. This was when the band were just about to hit it big, just after 'Buck Rogers' came out and just before the 'Echo Park' album came out, when the band were still half-decent and in possession of their original drummer.

Anyway, out come Utah Saints with a couple of record players and a trestle table which they proceed to stand behind and play a selection of crap dancey tunes. When they come to the only song of theirs anyone has actually heard ("Something Good" I believe it's called, the one with the repetitive "Utah Saints! U-U-U-Utah Saints!" bit in it), I'm quite bored and more than a little tipsy, so I start singing "Who are you? Who-who-who-who are you?", fairly quietly and to myself more than anyone else. The people around me pick up on it, and pretty soon it becomes a full-on chant which culminates in the 'Saints being bottled offstage.

Needless to say, I felt quite smug.

Fast forward a couple of years, and Feeder are emabarking on their first UK tour since the death of their drummer, Grant Nicholas having used this event to transform Feeder from a really great little quirky rock band into a radio-friendly middle aged, middle of the road generic guitar-pop band, and have chosen the dull-as-ditchwater Aqualung to support.

We're in the Birmingham NIA, and out strolls Aqualung, to absolutely NO applause, sits behind his piano and plays a couple of songs. Nothing. No one's enjoying it, he's dying on his arse. He pauses for a moment before launching into another ditty, just long enough for someone in my general vicinity to shout out of the silence: "NICE JUMPER!". Cue much tittering.
(Tue 11th Apr 2006, 3:02, More)

» Missing body parts

Not really a missing body part, but ...
When I was about 6, my dad's long-lost father came over from Australia to visit for a few weeks. Among the dazzling array of presents he brought his newly-discovered grandson was a boomerang.

Try as I might, I could never make the damn thing come back, so a week or so after my grandad went back home to Oz, my dad took me down to the park to show me how to throw it.

"Now, what you do is, you hold it like this, then throw it like this", he said, and threw it. "Now come and stand next to me in case it comes back and hits you". Duly obliging, I come and stand next to him. Boomerang comes whizzing back and smacks me straight in the stomach. Cue crying 6 year old, doubled over in pain.

I've never thrown the bloody thing since.
(Fri 2nd Jun 2006, 12:46, More)

» Never Meet Your Heroes

Mistaken identity
A few years ago I went to see the mighty Terrorvision rock the house at the Duchess of York in Leeds. I arrive nice and early, and proceed knocking a few back in the bar. I'm walking back over to my mates when I bump into a Japanese bloke with bleached blonde hair, spilling my pint all over him, and most of his over the floor. Cue me apologising profusely, offering to get him another beer, etc etc. He smiles, says not to worry, and wanders off.

After the gig, it's past kicking out time and Tony, the singer from Terrorvision, has found his way behind the bar and is distributing free beer to the fans, against the protests of the bar staff. As he's handing me my drink, who should appear but the Japanese guy I spilled my beer over earlier? He walks behind the bar, pats Tony on the shoulder and disappears through the door that leads to the dressing room. It's then that the penny drops. "That's ... that's ... him from Feeder!" I stammer at Tony. "Taka, aye", replies Tony. D'OH!

Incidentally, I've met Terrorvision many times, and they're throughly nice blokes. Not a whiff of prima-dona rockstar sensibility. A couple of them do keep trying to get into my female friends' knickers though.
(Wed 31st May 2006, 3:44, More)