The Daily Tonic: Clanging On The Telephone

Yesterday’s story about Ken Dodd drop-calling his agent just to say “Dodd here!” before hanging up so that he’d save the cost of the call got us thinking about how other showbiz types behave on the phone.

Before Alan Yentob had to step down from the BBC for his part in the Kids Charity fiasco, one of his favourite power moves was this. When someone had a meeting with him, he’d wait until the person stepped over the threshold of his office before ordering his assistant to call someone famous. (“Get me Bono on the phone!”)

He would then proceed to have an entire conversation in front of them, at the end of which he would hang up and say ‘That was Bono.’

Ken Dodd’s agent might have been happy to indulge his client’s calls, but today’s comedy management types wouldn’t dream of brooking such cheek.

Jon Thoday of Avalon (who manages most of the acts you’ve ever seen on BBC/Dave panel shows) certainly doesn’t care for people being snippy to him on the blower.

When someone once dared to be the one to hang up a phone call with him, he had his PA ring the person straight back just to say “No-one does that to Jon” and then put the phone down on them.

As we’re on a bit of a roll with it, today we want to know more about celebs being weird on the phone.

Today Question: Which celebrities have unusual or surprising phone habits? Ringtones, answerphone messages, salutations or sign-offs – if it’s odd, charming or vile, we want to hear about it.

Send your stories of the phone quirks of famous people to hello@popbitch.com and we’ll send out a few digital goodies to our favourites.

Ned Smanks writes:
“I was a buyer for a now defunct chain of record shops in the late 90s/early 00s. One of the regular perks of the job was never-ending invitations to various gigs and nights out set up by record companies who wanted to butter me up.

“I was once invited to a night out with Sir Tom Jones, alongside a number of buyers from other retail chains, when he was just about to release his Reload album. We were all ushered into a room where we were presented with an NDA which forbade us from disclosing any details of what happened on the night out. If we didn’t sign, we weren’t allowed to attend.

“I’ve been on evenings out with some of the most hardcore caners (Tommy Lee, Bez, Liam G) and have never been asked to sign an NDA, before or since.

“The night itself was actually fairly restrained… but I can’t tell you that.”

J writes:
“I’m a bit late with this one but I have a ‘Ken Dodd is stingy’ story. I worked in the bar at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle upon Tyne. When Ken Dodd performed there, he took the tradition of sending a drink to the orchestra on the last night to the extreme by sending them half a pint of bitter. Between all 32 of them.”

Here’s another ten tracks pulled from the tracklists of Steve Wright’s Sunday Love Songs cash-in compilation CDs, all clipped and stitched together. How many do you recognise?

You get a point for each correctly guessed artist, a point for each correctly guessed song title. Ten songs in the mix. Twenty points in total.

[Get playing here]

Seals singing Seal
[Listen on YouTube]

When John Waters met Little Richard
[Read on the Guardian]

Local News Of The Week: Knob-Eating Edition
[Read on Somerset Live]