Colour supplement piece glued into a scrapbook circa 1979 - the author is possibly Keith Waterhouse.
Attempts to put these prank tactics into practice - in the elevator at Dillons, in department stores - led to underwhelming results. Perhaps grown-ups instinctively tune out the prattlings of children. Perhaps we weren't good enough actors.
Conversely, eavesdropping rarely trawls up anything very startling or surreal.
rejected Daily Telegraph story phoned in from a regional stringer where it reached the copy-editing stage (my dad) but was deemed insufficiently newsworthy to go to press. Maybe on a slower news day? My father brought it home for our entertainment.
Daily Telegraph's equivalent of Page 3 in those days was not bare-chested young ladies but grisly stories - "boy's arm severed in elevator accident", that kind of thing. Maybe if the car had reversed and crushed a granny or smashed through someone's living room, the news item might have had legs.
