Phone numbers for use in TV shows, films and creative works

My fictional British phone number is:

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.

My fictional British phone number is: 0118 999 88199 9119 725 3

From the hilarious TV Series "IT Crowd":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWc3WY3fuZU

From the amazing, in more ways than one, Graham Linehan <3

Well, that's not so hard to remember.

The streaming services in recent years decided to remove that IT Crowd episode entirely, which is unfortunate as it was very funny.

Why should I care about his opinions on identity politics? I find his comedy funny. He could be Hitler for all I care.

Growing up my home phone number was 4 digits for a local call, or at least so I was required to memorise it as a small child.

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!

It’s the episode

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.

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.

To be pedantic, both 0171 and 0181 became 020, but with the 7 or the 8 moved to the front of the number, so 0171 222 1234 [1] became 020 7222 1234, with 7222 1234 being dialable in London without the area code.

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

I can still remember four digit numbers for some of my school friends.

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.

In the US, there was a period when phone numbers were getting scarce in some locales as faxes/modems/etc. were coming in. Additional area codes were added, as was lampooned in a Seinfeld episode at one point; some people got rather hot and bothered when they got migrated from the "main" metro area code to essentially a suburban area code.

I suspect my ability to sing ‘0181 811 81 81’ might mark be out as a Briton of a certain age…

Are you OK?

I really hate that shit a lot. There are some really funny It’s Always Sunnny episodes that have been yanked too.

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.

A few years ago, I read an interview with Simon Fanshawe, one of the founders of the UK charity Stonewall. It was very insightful for a number of reasons, but what was most interesting were his thoughts on why the gay rights movement had succeeded, yet trans activism was beginning to fail.

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.

That brought back memories. To think there was a time when directory enquiries was free and you spoke to a real human, armed with a telephone book. Sometimes you could be on hold for a while, however, you could also be vague with your enquiry, for the operator to check spelling variants for you.

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.

I guess FTP was the extinction event for Kermit ... and didn't Kermit itself kill off the various [XYZ]Modem protocols?

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.

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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!