On occasion, radio stations would do bits where they would call a random payphone from the website. My house was called 3 times for the same bit by different radio stations. Within a month apart, I spoke to two different stations from New Zealand. MoreFM was one of them, but I don't remember the other. I do remember that that were very disappointed when I told them I had just spoken to MoreFM a month prior. Also MoreFM was the only station that didn't end the bit when I explained it was not a pay phone
Did you find out how this came to be, or just random typo?
Curious what the purpose of calling a pay phone is? (wasn't possible in my country)
If you want to let somebody know you can't talk right now but you will call them back in 10 minutes, this makes it possible without having them use another quarter (coin currency in US) to call you back in 10 minutes, or requiring them to feed quarters in while you wait on hold for 10 minutes.
Also plenty of other reasons that we've all seen in spy movies :)
So much of the things in the book that we think of as familiar didn't even really exist when Johnny Mnemonic was written in 1981, again on a mechanical typewriter.
Like those Victorian era drawings of people in posh dresses walking across lakes by having hot-air balloons tied to their bodies..
Even sci-fi games involving space ships and aliens have people using floppy disks, printouts, and faxes.. in years long after those things went out of common use.
Before the iPhone very little sci-fi predicted something like smartphones being so prevalent throughout global society. Today even some of the poorest people in the poorest countries have some form of personal mobile phone.
And even now, the best we can imagine is that people will still be using phones and laptops in 2060.
I do think some sort of AR interface is somewhere in the future but it's almost certainly a long way off for mainstream adoption.
and Larry Niven!
Faster horses!
Asimov has some good stories where people no longer know how to read and write and multiply because everything is done on computers and all interactions with computers and are done by voice.
Also, to save a click, the movie is Phone Booth.
They actually just demolished the building that formally housed the restaurant (a Friendly's if anyone is familiar). The building sat empty for years.
Mostly for the humor value for an on-air radio show. I’m sure were pre-arranged just to make sure they got something usable, but I can see the occasion where a random person walking by and hearing the pay phone RINGING would cause them to pause. As a teenager I would have picked it up in a heartbeat (even not having heard the radio shows).
As for other “purposes” I’ve seen some crime/drama shows where the bad guy tells someone to go to the corner pay phone and answer it when it rings at a specific time. Horrible idea now as the phone systems would easily record the number that called it, but up until the early 2000’s it would be one option. Today I would guess dropping a burner phone in an envelope for the “victim” would be a more likely movie trope…
(Source: I’m from the US and remember a few radio stations doing this in the 1980’s and 1990’s.)
I think the idea was that you'd be calling from another pay phone, probably a different one each time so the number didn't matter.
You could do the same with pagers. Your drug dealer would own a pager, you'd call the pager from a random pay phone and send that pay phone's number as a message. The dealer would then use a different pay phone to call you back.
Unlike cellphones, pagers were often one-way, receive-only devices, so you couldn't use them to track somebody's location.
I wish there was more to this story but we just chatted for a little bit and hung up.
Sure, but you would presumably also be at a payphone, and not use the same ones over and over. Short calls and leave quickly.
The call with them was right around the time of the theatrical release of the first film, and the people on t radio show were excited because the movie was filmed in New Zealand. To win the prize I had to name two people from New Zealand. I couldn't think of anyone, and earlier in the call I had already looked up the stations website, so they told me to go to the staff page and name two people.
This was back in the days of dial up Internet, but we were one of the first houses to get DSL. I remember one of the people at the radio station was amazed that I could be online and on the phone at the same time.
I love when film has a real world tie in
Edit: more media should do this. Fun Easter eggs on IP or numbers from the film.
But it would be possible to register a number and put a promotion or easter egg on it. These days with virtual phone numbers it would be pretty cheap. The main problem is it lasting when rest of promotion disappears.
But in this context it'd be the first digit of the area code, with no country code being used because the call is within the US. There are no area codes in the the North American Numbering Plan that start with a 1.
"The syntax rules for area codes do not permit the digits 0 and 1 in the leading position."
My guess would be it's to avoid ambiguity with the fact that 1 is also the country code. If I recall correctly, historically, dialing the 1 was necessary for any long distance call (even if not international).
You recall correctly. I haven't had a landline for a number of years now but I think it was still required latterly when I still had one. Don't think it was ever needed on cell (or maybe even valid) when I first got one at some point in the 1990s.
212-555-4240: The number of the modem at OTV that Dade social-engineers out of the security flunkie, allowing him to dial into the cable channel's systems
555-4817: Lisa Blair's phone number, which Lord Nikon recalls out of his photographic memory at the party.
555-4202: Kate's number, which Phreak connects to by rapidly pressing the prison phone's switchhook ten times (effectively pulse-dialing 0) and then asking the operator for help dialing
Given how stylized the movie is as a whole, the prominence of several obviously-fake phone numbers is the least of the things that break realism.
Eleven times; 1 was two clicks.
There are a few variations listed below, but none seem to use “extra” clicks.
01 811 8055
This used to be the BBC number for call ins, particularly the kids TV show 'Swap Shop', but also for so much else during the 1970s and 1980s.
This number was retired in 1990 when the London ran out of phone numbers and switched to two different prefixes, 071 and 081. The former was advertised on TV as 'Inner London' and the latter as 'Greater London'. This bit of marketing kept everyone happy.
There was still a problem with numbers and the need to go for eleven digits. Hence, in 1995, the codes for London changed again, to 0171 and 0181. This was PHONEDAY.
But still, more numbers were needed, plus the tech behind the scenes was ever-evolving. Hence, in 2000, the numbers changed again for London, for everything to start with 020, so 0171 became 0207 and 0181 became 0208.
But then everyone got mobile phones and we no longer heard about how the economy was growing so quickly that we had this apparent incessant need for even more phone numbers. Furthermore, mobile phones had contacts built into them, so there was no need to remember phone numbers, which was just as well as eleven digits were not so easy to memorise, particularly when the prefixes had changed around so much.
Hence, my personal choice of fictional number. Apart from anything else, it enables me to see how well forms are validated, plus 01 811 8055 is only going to ever be recognised as a 'famous' number by Brits over a certain age.
There are also now London numbers that start with a 3 or a 4 as well as 7 and 8 so it's important to properly describe the dialling code for London as 020.
Misconceptions about telephone dialling in the UK are so commonplace that they merit their own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_telephone_code_misconceptio...
[1] a real number that will get you through to Transport for London enquiries
Like we are adults here, folks. Who are these streaming platforms to police content in that way.
Same thing with basically every Louis episode. That was an amazing series.
https://screenrant.com/it-ycrowd-controversy-graham-linehan-...
Many classic tv shows have episodes and themes which are bad today. Star Trek has a lot of 60s attitudes — Mudds Women for example.
I choose to see them as signs at how far society has progressed. Or regressed in the case of trans.
In the 90s the U.K. TV soap “corronation street” - watched by about 30% if the population each week - had a trans character. The character had very little controversy.ant the same time everyone loved Dane Edna. And Mrs Merton.
But today those shows would be far more controversial.
On the flip side, Brookside had a pre watershed lesbian kiss and it was major amounts of outrage.
Framing trans advocacy as "authoritarian" is a rhetorical inversion -- the actual authoritarianism is coming from those trying to legislate trans people out of public life. The "boundaries" you describe aren’t feminist; they're exclusionary by definition, since they redefine womanhood in purely biological terms and erase trans women entirely.
Trans rights aren’t a new ideology -- they’re a continuation of the same principle that guided the gay rights movement since the 1969 Stonewall uprising, led in part by trans women like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera: the freedom to live authentically without persecution. Trying to divide those struggles is a well-worn tactic used against every marginalized group in history.
>His dating site shenanigans were very amusing though. Clearly his flair for comedy hasn't suffered, though he could do with dialing back the obsession on this specific topic, for his own good more than anything.
If your idea of "amusing" comedy is a grown man catfishing queer people on a dating site just to publicly mock them, that’s not humor -- that’s bullying dressed up as banter. The difference between good satire and cruelty is simple: good satire punches up, exposing hypocrisy or power; cruelty punches down, targeting people who already face stigma.
Linehan’s "flair for comedy" has curdled into sadism, and that is why his wife divorced him and won't let him contact his own kids: the only audience left laughing are those sickos who enjoy watching others humiliated, like you admit to, concerned more for "his own good" and freedom from self-inflicted and well-deserved consequences, than the suffering of the innocent marginalized people he's bullying. That’s not wit, it’s moral decay.
He made the very astute point that Stonewall's strategy was to take specific issues concerning lesbian women and gay men, and from these, derive broader principles which the general public could easily support. It was all about invoking a sense of fairness, and this is how they gradually built up support for equal rights.
He compared this to trans activism, and observed that these activists weren't following the same strategy. Instead, they were just telling people they're wrong, intimidating them into silence, and calling them bigots and scum and transphobic. He predicted that this approach was going to backfire. It seems he was right.
The other point he made was how trans activism more negatively affects women and especially lesbian women, many of whom had contacted him in distress at what they saw, increasingly so, as lesbian erasure. He talked about the death threats and violence towards lesbians that came from the trans activist side. He talked about how lesbian protesters had recently been kicked out of a Pride march for asserting their same-sex sexual orientation.
If we look at the points Graham Linehan has been making, they are very similar. His satirical profile on what was purportedly a lesbian dating site was a comedy bit with a serious point: that his ridiculous and overtly male presence on there was indistinguishable from the many other males on that app who called themselves lesbians. He was using comedy to draw attention to the erasure of a much more marginalized group, lesbian women.
Everyone used to be in the phone book, to get anyone's number was just a matter of detective work, particularly if there were lots of 'J Smith' entries and you only had a vague idea where they lived.
We didn't have scam callers but 'wrong number' was quite common. People also used to phone their friends more often, since text messaging, email and apps were not available options.
In the very late 90s I briefly had a rotary dial phone - very anachronistic even then - and discovered that dialling an eleven digit number that way is a huge ballache - it's so sloooow! Especially if the number has a bunch of 9s in it.
A little after that I was in the US but kept using my British mobile for a month or two as my contact - giving my number to people was even worse ... rattling off a 15 digit (international prefix plus country code) always confused people.
I too remember the Swap Shop number with some fondness. I certainly called it at least once or twice.
Last note - I realised recently that I still know the X29 address for nsfnet relay from Janet to the Internet (basically a Janet-to-telnet relay). That's a 14 digit number that I last used over 30 years ago. My memory's pretty average, but man, once stuff goes in it does not come out again!
At the time there were two digit codes for neighbouring exchanges, however, these were not universal. For example, my parents phone was on exchange 'P' and the code to call my friends in town 'S' was 81. However, if I went to town 'G', the code for town 'S' was something completely different.
The new and longer prefixes were introduced in parallel to the convenient two digit short codes. I can't quite remember all of the lingo for what the new prefixes and systems were called, however, for the rotary dial phone, you did not have to dial all ten digits (or latterly eleven), as you obviously memorised the 2 + 4 numbers for all of your friends, and only needed to spend a brief amount of time waiting for that dial to tap out its special codes.
The 'Swap Shop number' was also used for early Crimewatch programmes and so much else. Jim'll Fix It was write-in only from what I remember, and I have a sister that wrote in to meet Kermit. She dodged a bullet there!
I didn't get to know X29 or nsfnet as well as you, at the time networking skills were tantamount to witchcraft voodoo. However, I remember JANET addresses being back to front. For example, I was at Plymouth where it was something like uk.ac.plymouth. We also had lots of different non-TCP/IP network standards going on with considerable skill needed to get files between SGI/Sun workstations, IBM workstations, IBM mini-computers, VAX VMS and those new-fangled PCs.
Kermit was the tool used for moving files around, and I am now wondering what happened to Kermit. Kermit has dropped out of the history books somewhat.
I too recall the reversed addresses. The transition from X29 to Internet fell in the middle of my university¹ education... we went from mostly Vax/VMS+JANET when I started to mostly Linux+Internet when I left (and the web had suddenly appeared too). There was an awkward bit in the middle where I was super keen to be on the internet (though my main interest was Usenet) and the nsfnet relay via PAD on the Vax was the only available intermediary. It's mildly interesting that the sole system I could connect to in this way to browse Usenet was Nyx which rather amazingly is still up. I assume they deleted my account at some point in the last 30 years though. It was unbearably slow anyway, so I gave up quite swiftly.
Fun times dimly remembered.
---
¹Actually a Poly, uk.ac.pow when I arrived, but a Uni, glam.ac.uk when I left. It's changed name once or twice since then as well!
HIGHLY recommend this YouTube channel from a movie/TV propmaker: https://www.youtube.com/@ScottPropandRoll
Covers everything from: - making fake food for eating
- how to make potato chip bags that don't crinkle
- breakaway props e.g. for hitting people with baseball bats etc
(edit: I see now the domain is .gov.au specifically)
I have shared this story on Reddit before and I got banned from r/AskReddit for "doxing". That phone number is super secret and must not be publicized! Whoops!
About ten years ago or so, Kroger finally integrated the loyalty programs across all their brands of stores (City Market, Harris Teeter, Kroger, King Soopers, Ralphs, Fred Meyer, and others, but those are the ones I have been in), so you can use pretty much any older area code you like to try it out.
Heck it might be worth trying to purchase said number for the rewards, come to think of it.
Anyone who needs a number for a legitimate reason should do their own validation anyway.
You can try calling them but they return "number disconnected" messages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_telephone_country_code...