Phone Numbers for Use in TV Shows, Films and Creative Works

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

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!

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

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

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.

Pennsylvania 6-5000 was a real phone number too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEnnsylvania_6-5000

Rumor also has it that in virtually any major grocery store in the USA you can put in any (valid) area code and 867-5309 and it will work as a rewards member number to get you the discounts. I have done it when traveling and have had success.

I heard of a business trying to sell it but couldn’t for licensing so sold the business and the number was incidental.

Generally 867-5309 in the local area code works for most rewards programs.

It's funny to see where that number ends up. Even on government websites, e.g. https://staging.housingbayarea.mtc.ca.gov/listing/ext/40d6d4...

One time I used 867-5309 at a chain store, the young male checkout clerk had an instant of a look of recognition, and promptly sang the number, really well.

(xxx)555-1212 works surprisingly often. I've used it more than a few times while traveling.

About ten years ago or so, Kroger finally integrated the loyalty programs across all their brands of stores (City Market, Harris Teeter, Kroger, King Soopers, Ralphs, Fred Meyer, and others, but those are the ones I have been in), so you can use pretty much any older area code you like to try it out.

There was a fairly large local grocery chain who just required the last 4 digits of the phone number to get a discount. I’m not sure who thought that was a good idea, but they’ve since gone out of business (I’m reasonably certain there’s no direct correlation between those facts).

Something burned into my brain is "call 836-7000 or visit transitchicago.com" which was an announcement that played seemingly every 30 seconds on CTA buses back when I lived there. I was in California once and tried 312-836-7000 as the loyalty card phone number at Safeway and it worked. So I guess I'm not the only one. (847- 773- etc. would probably also work. That's why I thought the message was so cool... they got the number in every Chicagoland area code!)

I have shared this story on Reddit before and I got banned from r/AskReddit for "doxing". That phone number is super secret and must not be publicized! Whoops!

I have one of these that I use when dealing with retailers for which the phrase "I don't have a smartphone" does not compute. Saves the hassle of having to explain it every time, and so far I'm the only one using my made up number, so they "remember me" or whatever. But they can't actually call, and that's the point.

Man, I miss the days when telephones were just telephones. The world just seems less mysterious now.

> Curious what the purpose of calling a pay phone is? (wasn't possible in my country)

If you want to let somebody know you can't talk right now but you will call them back in 10 minutes, this makes it possible without having them use another quarter (coin currency in US) to call you back in 10 minutes, or requiring them to feed quarters in while you wait on hold for 10 minutes.

Also plenty of other reasons that we've all seen in spy movies :)

> Curious what the purpose of calling a pay phone is? (wasn't possible in my country)

Mostly for the humor value for an on-air radio show. I’m sure were pre-arranged just to make sure they got something usable, but I can see the occasion where a random person walking by and hearing the pay phone RINGING would cause them to pause. As a teenager I would have picked it up in a heartbeat (even not having heard the radio shows).

As for other “purposes” I’ve seen some crime/drama shows where the bad guy tells someone to go to the corner pay phone and answer it when it rings at a specific time. Horrible idea now as the phone systems would easily record the number that called it, but up until the early 2000’s it would be one option. Today I would guess dropping a burner phone in an envelope for the “victim” would be a more likely movie trope…

(Source: I’m from the US and remember a few radio stations doing this in the 1980’s and 1990’s.)

There was once an application, long gone and probably short lived, that let you ring payphones for free over the internet. Me and my mates had a great time phoning up times square, a pub in Australia and other places chatting to randoms.

As a kid on school trips I would call my parents with one token (in my country that's what was used) and asked them to call me back. Sometimes at the end of the call your friend might ask your parents to call their parents and asked them to call the pay phone, and so on.

I'm not sure how it came to be. My guess is typo. The restaurant in question was down the street from me and it did have a payphone outside of it. I can't recall if I ever went to check the phone number of the payphone.

They actually just demolished the building that formally housed the restaurant (a Friendly's if anyone is familiar). The building sat empty for years.

I did win a Lord of the Rings prize pack from MoreFM, but it never arrived at my house. Either it got lost in transit or they just never shipped it.

The call with them was right around the time of the theatrical release of the first film, and the people on t radio show were excited because the movie was filmed in New Zealand. To win the prize I had to name two people from New Zealand. I couldn't think of anyone, and earlier in the call I had already looked up the stations website, so they told me to go to the staff page and name two people.

This was back in the days of dial up Internet, but we were one of the first houses to get DSL. I remember one of the people at the radio station was amazed that I could be online and on the phone at the same time.

I think the goal with 555 numbers is people know not to call it.

But it would be possible to register a number and put a promotion or easter egg on it. These days with virtual phone numbers it would be pretty cheap. The main problem is it lasting when rest of promotion disappears.

When I was a kid '555' was my whole [UK local] phone number.

It still is, for every area code I believe. It's the same as calling 411 where I am. (Information)

I thought 1 is the country prefix for the USA?

I think that’s at least in part because some 555 prefix numbers have been assigned for non-directory information uses (I have a vague notion of seeing this for some toll-free numbers).

>rapidly pressing the prison phone's switchhook ten times (effectively pulse-dialing 0)

Eleven times; 1 was two clicks.

Probably Out-Going Message.