Pranks You've Played

[ian.64]

Could be successful ones, ones that failed royally, had repercussions (as long as they weren't horrible in nature), any really.

I recalled one today that went back to when local West Midlands sports radio gobjockey, Tony Butler, was in the last years of his pomp. In charge of the football phone-in, he was pretty much blarping his way through another hour when I decided to text through a request to ask football fans whether they remembered a Birmingham City midfielder from the 60s called Malcolm Ayness. Butler duly read out the text, spluttering with giggles on the third mention of the fictional mid fielder's name.

Childish, too much time on my hands, etc.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Pranks You've Played

I once pretended to be a work colleague in an application to go on 1990s game show Gladiators . They were that impressed with "his" application he started receiving letters at home from the production team inviting him to medicals and rehearsal days, and everything.

[WOM]

Pranks You've Played

Listened to that three times and can't make heads nor tails of it.

[Guest]

Pranks You've Played

This one sounded good.

[Giggler]

Pranks You've Played

We did this when I was younger.

Call a random telephone number and ask for Angus. Receive reply "Nobody called that lives here mate, sorry."

Ten minutes later, get another mate to ring the same number and ask for Angus. "Sorry mate, nobody of that name lives here."

Fifteen minutes later, get a third mate to call the same number and ask for Angus. "Look, no-one of that name lives here."

Two minutes later, call same number and say "Hi, it's Angus, are there any messages for me?"

This was the funniest thing in the world when I was 14.

[Giggler]

Pranks You've Played

A mate of mine takes a regular dislike to people on other internet forums, so he signs up to adult websites using their usernames. He'll then go searching for fairly 'niche' material and comment on it using that name. It's a long game and it's never certain that anyone will ever make the connection, but if they do my mate reckons it would be worth it.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Pranks You've Played

Repeatedly signing my mate up to various things, including getting him enrolled in the local bingo club, Saga holidays (we were 23 at the time) and - my personal favourite - getting someone round to his flat to talk about conservatories.

On the third floor.

[linus]

Pranks You've Played

Back in the early 1990s, I stayed in a house in San Francisco with a big Sony TV and a miniature spare remote control about the size of a credit card, and thin enough to discretely fit in a sweater sleeve. There was a big sports bar nearby with a fairly obnoxious ownership and regular clientele, and a nice set of Sony TVs. I went in for a 49er playoff game and somehow the TV stations kept changing to the Mexican variety show at the most inopportune moments...

[Kevin S]

Pranks You've Played

There was some sort of screen color test you could run on Acorn computers via the command prompt. Can't remember the key combination these days but once at school I set the entire suite of computers off flashing the desktop in a variety of bright colours. Freaked out the teacher good and proper.

[Chairman Zhao]

Pranks You've Played

This was during the senior of highschool. The rival highschool was adjacent to us, separated by a fence. Anyway, these guys always loved to play pranks on us. They even landed onto the newspapers a few times, they got pretty damn extreme. Be it raiding our school with balaclavas or just simply egging us around campus or whatever. They were a pretty unruly bunch.

Last week of school, smooth sailing. We thought they'd do nothing due to all the media fiascos they've been caught in, 2 years before their entire senior form got suspended for attacking a girl's school and stoning some place (can't remember). Anyhow, we awoke to the final week of our schooling days to a giant phallic shape being burnt into the school oval. Darn, they bloody got us. Turns out google maps went fly by over as well, and it was etched on for a few years. Not sure if I can find a photo.

EDIT: Oh just noticed the title was pranks you've played...my bad

[Femme Folle]

Pranks You've Played

So many. One memorable one was an April Fool's Day prank I played on my mother when I was 10 or 11. My dad had a large aquarium with some rather expensive fish in it. The minute I came home from school, I phoned her at work and said, "MOM! The aquarium is broken and fish are dead and there's water all over the floor!" Dead silence, broken after a couple of seconds by me with "APRIL FOOL!" She said that I really had her going and that she was going to kill me when she got home.

I played a lot on my college roommate. One time I hid in her closet while she was out of the room. When she came back, she opened the closet door and I went "RAH!" and scared the crap out of her. The next time I did it, karma rewarded me. I had a bottle of wine in my bag. We had asked the clerk at the shop to open it for us since we didn't have a corkscrew. As I was waiting in the closet for her to open the door, I heard glug glug glug and felt something wet running down my leg. I opened the door and she had the last laugh. I shouldn't have pressed my luck.

There was one prank that someone played on the girls in my sister's office. Someone sent them a postcard that said something about their hunky postman. When he delivered the mail that day, he kind of smiled at whoever it was he handed the mail to. They had no idea who sent it, but they decided that it was me. It wasn't. I mean, it was a good prank, but I honestly had nothing to do with it. I think they still believe to this day that I sent that postcard.

[Jah Womble]

Pranks You've Played

In my art school days, a couple of female friends of mine used to fill out and send off mailshots thereby bombarding my digs with ridiculous brochures for home insurance, cavity wall insulation, stairlifts - or worse - usually under names like 'Dr Aynus' (mirroring ian.64 somewhat), 'Mr Crutchworthy' or similar. This was amusing for about a month. After such time, however, I started receiving 'phone calls from companies wanting to set up meetings and what-have-you - which quickly became hugely irritating. (The girls ceased and desisted, but obviously these companies would've sold my address onward, so it didn't let up.)

Finally, the straw came that broke the camel's back - stuff arriving at my parents' place during the holidays. (My mother was briefly amused; the old man, less so...)

So, I 'phoned one of the girls, very early on an Easter holiday morning, when I knew she'd be half asleep. Putting on my best (don't ask why) Scots accent, I informed her that she and another person - whose name I convincingly mis-transcribed as 'Jane' from 'Janet' (plus surname) - were being investigated by the Fraud Division of the Royal Mail, and proceeded to name some of the supposedly-wronged companies. Said girl utterly fell for the ruse, her voice rising from mild annoyance into blind panic in the space of my two-minute spiel. She hit meltdown as I went on to inform her that she needed to report to Rochester Police Station at 8.45am and register her name while further action was considered. (Like any of this could or would ever happen...)

I then asked her to make a note of my (assumed) name, the time of the call, and today's date - April 1st. I then hung up.

[treibeis]

Pranks You've Played

There used to be a Mr. Smelé in the local phone book. My mates and I would often ring his number, shout something like, “Mr Smelly! You reek! You fucking stink!” and then hang up.

We were 37 at the time.

[WOM]

Pranks You've Played

Yes. A Mr Lipschitz in Toronto was subjected to a similar rapier-like wit.

[caja-dglh]

Pranks You've Played

I have a friend for New York who decided he enjoyed watching football with us and to pick a club to support. After much consideration he decided to be an Arsenal fan (to go with a few of our mutual friends).

I signed him up to the Tottenham mailing list.

He got removed.

Two years later they clearly did some database work and he got emails again. He had an email string running for about three weeks between him and Tottenham marketing trying to work out why he was getting emails.

[ursus arctos]

Pranks You've Played

The fact that some Yalies pulled this off in Cambridge a decade ago was a very clear sign that our standards have declined significantly since my time there.



MIT takes these things incredibly seriously.

[Gangster Octopus]

Pranks You've Played

Giggler wrote: We did this when I was younger.

Call a random telephone number and ask for Angus. Receive reply "Nobody called that lives here mate, sorry."

Ten minutes later, get another mate to ring the same number and ask for Angus. "Sorry mate, nobody of that name lives here."

Fifteen minutes later, get a third mate to call the same number and ask for Angus. "Look, no-one of that name lives here."

Two minutes later, call same number and say "Hi, it's Angus, are there any messages for me?"

This was the funniest thing in the world when I was 14.

Just heard this on an episode of Radio Active...

[dalliance]

Pranks You've Played

This one goes back to April Fools Day 20 years ago when myself and my Champ Man making team had some downtime after a busy period.

Some relevant information first. Our offices were overpopulated at the time and we were in an open-plan section with dividing walls between us and other departments. You could hear conversations from neighbouring areas if you chose to listen. Also, all incoming calls went to the receptionist who would announce calls over a tannoy that people could then take from their desks.

So there was this posh girl in her early 20s who worked there, nice enough but essentially in gainful employment with us because her dad was a good friend of one of the directors. She was a touch dizzy too and we thought she might make a good target.

I recalled overhearing a conversation she had had with another girl some months earlier about how her parents house was broken into and how, along with the valuables, the thiefves had taken some of her underwear. Ideal I thought.

I had a new graphic designer on board that few in the office had met and so didn't really know what his voice sounded like. The plan we formulated involved him phoning up this girl Charlotte, pretending he was a DC from Richmond police station and telling her they had apprehended a burglar and found a large pile of womens knickers.

So he went into a quiet office and called our reception and asked for Charlotte. We were sitting in the next area, out of sight of course but not out of earshot. She took the call and seemed quite convinced.

So 15 minutes later one of her friends dropped by her desk and Charlotte started telling her about the call and how the DC had asked if she could come down to the station that afternoon to try and identify her lost knickers. The other girl seemed much more suspicious and reminded Charlotte that it was April 1st and all. Charlotte partially concurred but was wondering how anyone could have known about the original theft.

The other girl then suggested that if it was genuine the DC would have called her parents at home - they were the ones that reported the crime after all. That made a lot of sense and so Charlotte called home straight away and spoke to her mother who confirmed she had had no calls from any police officer.

Convinced it was a prank Charlotte went off for a cigarette. So things were falling flat now but we had an ace up our sleeve. We nipped in to her area which was fortunately empty, picked up her phone, pressed redial and quickly wrote down Charlotte's parents number before it started ringing.

Back into the office goes the designer and this time he calls the Mum at home with the same story, explaining that they had not recovered any valuables and just had the underwear to go on - the thieves had not taken any of her Mum's pants.

Two minutes later and the receptionist announces a call for Charlotte. She returns to her desk to take it and it's her mum to say that yes, she too has now been contacted by the police too.

Now duly convinced by the authenticity of the story, we hear Charlotte telling her friend she was nipping out for an hour to go to Richmond police station and identify her missing knickers, and off she goes.

All was revealed later on of course and we were keen to know what had happened at the station. She had gone in and said she was hear to identify her lost knickers after receiving a call from a DC who of course didn't exist. She said the police guys had a good laugh about it and told her that three quarters of the walk-ins they get on April 1st are from people who have been pranked.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Pranks You've Played

In 1997, I was working in a warehouse and most of the staff were Chelsea supporters. Bowie had just released "Little Wonder" and I managed to convince some of them that Bowie was a Chelsea fan and the song was about Gianfranco Zola.

I'm fairly sure I was inspired by a Danny Baker tale, convincing his wife that Shaka Hislop was Ian Hislop's brother whilst listening to a game on the radio.

[nmrfox]

Pranks You've Played

Many years ago worked with a lady who some of us in the office didn't particularly like and who had spectacularly large hair; a sort of Brian May Crystal Tipps hybrid.

She went to lunch one day but left her car keys on the desk. We emptied every hole punch in the department into a bag, went to her car and emptied the whole lot into the air vent and changed the internal fan settings to maximum blow into the car. When work finished we followed at a reasonable distance and watched in delight at the snow storm that engulfed her.

She never did find out who did it but never left her car keys in full view of everyone again.

[Giggler]

Pranks You've Played

Similarly, I used to work with a guy who worked at the Daily Sport. Apparently there was always super-strength Frankie Vaughan lying around so they cut pictures out of magazines and put them in the news editor's open umbrella which they then closed. Said news editor went to the shops at lunchtime... when it started raining.

[S. aureus]

Pranks You've Played

A few years back some of my co-workers and I had a company sponsored boondoggle to celebrate some good results that involved a trip to Napa and fairly copious wine tasting, followed by dinner at Fleur de Lys.
One of my co-workers got particularly drunk. Nothing especially untoward happened at the dinner, and I had to ride BART back with this particular co-worker, where I realized that he was likely to have pretty hazy, if any, recollections of the evening.
The following day he called in 'sick', and I convinced the rest of the group to tell him, on his recovery, that, during dinner, he'd returned from the restroom, sat down at a completely different table and had to be escorted back to ours by the staff after the other diners had complained.
Which he bought, hook, line and sinker.
All very droll, however the best part came a week later when he told us that he'd actually gone back to Fleur de Lys and apologized.

edit: The celebration involved the trip to Napa, not the good results,

[Guy Profumo]

Pranks You've Played

This thread just reinforces more and more how I despise practical jokes.

[Jah Womble]

Pranks You've Played

Never the smartest idea to let folk know that.

[Guy Profumo]

Pranks You've Played

Jah Womble wrote: Never the smartest idea to let folk know that.

How, exactly, is anyone here supposed to exploit that?

Yep. Wind ups, piss-taking, and setting of traps - ok.

But the physical and real world practical joke?

Nah. Don't believe it.