With Just A Hint Of Mayhem

A balls up from the Met perhaps?

"You wanna use song titles in your evidence?" "You've got the gun, want me to play piano?"

A Metropolitan Police Firearms Officer has been suspended after giving evidence at the inquest into Mark Saunders. Saunders was a  Barrister who was killed by the police in May 2008 following a threatening standoff involving a shotgun at his Chelsea home.The suspension happened after it was discovered that he planted numerous song titles in his evidence. Among those songs were;

“No More Tears (Enough is Enough)” – Donna Summer and Barbara Streisand

“Point of No Return” – Duran Duran

“Line of Fire” – Journey

“Faith” – George Michael

“Quiet Moments” Chris De Burgh

“Kicking Myself” – As Tall As Lions

“Fuck My Old Boots” – Membranes

Now I have played this game, along with Bullshit Bingo at various meetings over the years, however I would not dream of doing anything like it in such a serious situation. Just what kind of idiot is this copper? To think that he is allowed to carry a gun too! You can read the story at the Guardian and the BBC.

I have played said game on at least two occasions. Firstly back in the 90s when I worked in the Finance team at a large Pharmaceutical company. We decided to see who could get the most Phil Collins solo titles into their working day. I didn’t win. The champion was Dave, who actually managed to get “Sussudio” into a conversation! How did he manage that? Well largely because he always struggled to pronounce the name of one of the director’s PAs, which was Cecilia. As I recall the conversation went something along the lines of “Has anyone seen Ce-Ce-Ce-Sussudio” I also realise that this does not look even remotely funny when you read it, but you really had to be there.

The second occasion was a little more planned and prepared. I was working in the project delivery team at a large electrical retailer in the UK back in 2000. Four of us decided that we were going to liven up our fortnightly status meeting with the IT Director by slipping as many Elton John song titles into the meeting as we could. We could only work from a pre agreed list of 25 songs. Apart from me the other participants were Kim, Phil and Frank. Phil bottled out and refused to take part and Frank was unwell, so that left just me and Kim. We both managed 11 each, however at the AOB stage of the meeting Irene the IT Director turned to Kim and said why do you have a list of what appears to be song titles in front of you and columns headed with four names. Basically Kim bottled it and simply said to Irene, it’s Elton John bingo and it’s all Bill’s idea. ( For the non regular readers I am Bill, but I’m not Spartacus, well not in this story anyway) As it happens I had resigned earlier that week so no punishment was forthcoming thankfully. There is a rather amusing footnote though, Irene the IT Director actually scored three points without even knowing she was playing. So for Kim an myself that meant that we were the winners but that Phil had effectively finished fourth out of three! Confused? probably!

I would love to hear your own stories of bullshit bingo experiences!