A friend of my Dad's was a bit of an Arthur Daly and used to use the number of the phone box in his street in advertisements in the local paper if he had a car to sell and he was often to be found sitting on the wall waiting for calls when the paper went on sale
A bit OT but this is worth recounting.
Suffolk's first local radio station, back in the days when this was a Big Thing, was Radio Orwell. One of its DJs was Andy Archer, ex Radio Caroline, and his programme had a competition called Phantom Phone Box, complete with a truly awful intro jingle.
Andy would announce a village phone box that he would ring after the next track played and the person who answered would get a goodie bag (of rubbish items, as far as I could tell). So what would happen is this:
"After Seasons in the Sun, the next Phantom Phonebox (cue crap jingle) will be in Gosbeck. Get down to the phonebox and if you're the first to answer, you can win a prize".
Now sometimes this worked but just as often it went something like:
Ringing tone. Click. Hello?
Hello, this is Andy Archer from Radio Orwell and you have won our Phantom Phonebox competition. (cue jingle).
What? Who are you?
Radio Orwell. You've won!
Won what? What's going on, bor? I wus walkin pust the phun box and it rung so I answered the bloomin' thing. Who are you? Are you off yer hid?
This was always much more interesting than when it worked as intended, especially if someone desperate for a Radio Orwell pen and notepad was hammering on the door, trying to take the call away from Mr Helpful. Andy Archer was a pro DJ so I'm sure he realised the competition going wrong was the real entertainment, despite playing it deadpan straight.
