My last radio post, about suicidal callers ringing up the phone-in from telephone boxes reminded me of a much happier use we found for the humble phone-box during my early days of radio: The Phantom Phone-box.
This was a quiz we used to play on the Saturday morning show. We'd drive round the area during the week and find a phone-box that wasn't too vandalised and didn't smell too much of wee, and we'd write down its phone number. Then we'd give cryptic clues out to its location early on in the show (Cryptic clues on a Saturday morning? That'll never catch on!). Sometime near the end of the show, we'd call the phone-box up live on air and if you answered it and said "the phrase that pays", we'd send you a prize.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes nobody would answer it. Sometimes a completely random passerby would answer it and not have a clue who we were. Sometimes a bunch of kids would answer it and scream obscenities until they were swiftly cut off. It was hardly revolutionary, but it seemed to go down pretty well.
Thinking back on that now... well, you wouldn't be able to play that game on the radio anymore, would you? Where did all the phone boxes go? They were on every street corner in our youth. Sam's generation won't even know what they were.
41. Primitive Radio Gods - Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand
Here's a song I discovered during my early days trawling the music blogosphere, and promptly fell in love with it. I've never really investigated this band in the way I should, although I did manage to track down a copy of the album this came from, 1996's Rocket. 1996... that'd be about the time we were doing The Phantom Phone Box (or maybe a little before that). 22 years ago, folks... back when phone boxes were still a thing.
Apparently, Primitive Radio Gods are still in the go though, even if phone boxes aren't. According to iffypedia, they released their 6th album in 2016.
Great idea for a phone-in but sounds just so archaic now. I have an image of people dressed in Anneka Rice suits running around trying to find the elusive phone boxes.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing, we didn't even have a house phone when I was growing up as everyone we knew or were related to lived in the village! When it got to my teenage years however I went to school in another town so all my friends, and more importantly potential boyfriends, lived there. Many hours were spent hanging around one of the two village phone boxes making, or waiting for calls. Today's youngsters with their iPhones don't know their born or is it another case of simpler times were actually better and less stressful times. Who knows.