Thursday, July 14th 1983...

...started like any other. I rolled up to the office of Northern telecom (UK) Ltd in Maidenhead, visited the coffee dispenser for a mugful, checked my faxes for anything important, then ripped June 13th off my desk calendar.

This wasn't any ordinary calendar, however, it was Polyunsaturated PEDIGREE NOT 1983 (with ADDED QN7), a spin-off sheet-per-day merchandise product of the then defunct Not the Nine O' Clock News, designed to cash in on the Christmas trade. (Dilbert hadn't been invented then so Engineers latched onto anything funny or surreal).

As was my want, I read the back of the outgoing sheet before putting it in the bin. Occasionally, I would chortle and show it to one or two others if it was particularly funny.

That day, I made the mistake of drinking at the same time and the result was a coffee spray and lots of coughing & gurgling. A colleague of mine picked it up, read it then started howling with laughter. Another took a look and fell off his chair. By mid day, practically everyone with a sense of humour had been to the photocopier.

What had amused us so much? Well, by the miracle of eBay, I am able to reproduce it below. It is written in the style of a ladies' comic quiz such as found in Woman's Own or Woman's Realm. (Or at least, it starts off that way!)

(I have to forewarn you that it contains a word or two not used in polite circles. To avoid upsetting Corporate firewalls, I have shuffled the letters up. Perservere with your pencil, and you will be able to unscramble it, although make sure you have some smelling salts to hand if you faint readily. Although a walk in the presence of builders or schoolchildren will find such words used as punctuation these days...)

How romantic is your chap?

Complete the quiz below and find out just how high he scores in the romance stakes!!!

His favourite name for you is...
a ( ) Sweetness, prettiness, honeypie, petal...
b ( ) Babe, baby.
c ( ) Bunny, squirrel nutkin.
b ( ) Cnut.

He wants to make love to you, he says...
a ( ) Nothing - but he tells you with his eyes, his hands.
b ( ) Hey babe/baby - lets get down on it.
c ( ) Kissy kissy.
d ( ) Get your frock off, cnut.

You're in the midst of a blazing row, you're most likely to end the evening...
a ( ) Laughing and hugging.
b ( ) Sharing a joint, injecting each other.
c ( ) Over his knee getting a good spanking.
d ( ) Unconscious/told to kcuf off because you're a cnut.

His favourite part of you is...
a ( ) Every little bit of you.
b ( ) Breasts, buttocks
c ( ) Your funny little nose.
d ( ) Cnut.




Afterthought... We received a shared account into the Nortel Corporate WAN a couple of days later. Alex, the Software Specialist, solemnly announced that the password was set to "FROCKOFF", which we revitalised every time the system would let us...