Answering machine humor: Please leave a message after the bleat

Please leave a message after the bleat

There is obviously money to be made from impersonating the voices of famous people on answering machines.

If you are a handy impersonator all you have to do is pretend you are George W. Bush or John W. Howard and say something silly.

"John Howard here. If that's my close personal friend George again, crikey it's midnight here in Australia and I am counting sheep. But I did like you said, and have despatched our troops to the Gulf. Please leave a message after my bleat and I will answer it as soon as I wake up to myself and pull the wool back from over my eyes."

I do not sell Funny Answering Machines or even words to go on them.

I am actually known for my very unfunny straight-to-the-point phone manner.
Usually it consists of: "Hello?"
If I am feeling talkative, I might add: "What the %$#@^%$ do you want?"

I admit my telephone etiquette is lacking.
But it is not my fault. The technology arrived too late in my life.
We never had a telephone in our house when I was a little kid in the early 1960s. We either had to go to a public phone box, bother a more affluent neighbour or run a piece of string and two empty Edgell's Peas cans between callers.

My six-year-old son Jack, on the other hand, has been using the telephone since he could talk and obviously has much greater telephonic skills than me. He thinks answering the phone is a great social occasion and runs to get there first. Heck, he even chats cheerfully to telemarketers.

But me? Well, the phone has never been my favourite device for communication.
Perhaps it is a hang-up from the days when phone calls, no matter to where, were really quite expensive.
You used them only for as long as you had to, and there certainly was no time for frivolity.

And most phones came in black, a bleak colour which certainly did not inspire great, artful conversation.

Oh, there were red ones. But they mostly belonged to people like the president of the United States. They were very important phones for very important people. They were hot lines. No, not to the local betting shop; probably to the drab black phone of the person who knew how to launch the missiles.

I wonder if Bush still has a red phone?

I read a while ago that he makes a habit of going around the White House office switching lights off after less-power-conscious staff.

Perhaps he also answers red phones at the White House rather than let them ring unanswered.
I have had bosses like that. They could not stand for phones to ring and ring and ring and customers to get away.
Of course, they handed the calls back to underlings as soon as they realised that they did not have a clue how to deal with the callers.

Not that I think the president of the United States would be out of his depth.

I have been thinking though.

For a very large fee, I might be able to do a little recording to help him out.

It would be in my voice because I cannot do very good impersonations.

"Hello. Dubya here. What the %$#@^%$ do you want now, John Howard?"

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it