Sweet Revenge: 200 Delicious Ways to Get Your Own Back

long-running affair with his secretary. The second was to dump her publicly and unceremoniously in favour of an eighteen-year-old temp in the Accounts Department. And the third was to order the same long-suffering secretary to take his 'emergency' suit to the cleaners in readiness for an early morning presentation to the Ministry of Defence when the agency stood a good chance of being awarded the highly lucrative naval recruitment account.
    She duly obeyed his instructions, omitting to mention a refinement which he only discovered twenty minutes before the presentation was due to take place. She had arranged with the dry cleaners that the trousers were shortened by eight inches.
     

     
    When Mr Smith discovered his wife was having an affair with her boss he decided to exact spectacular revenge. In order to do so he carefully researched and collected data and information on the eminent
    international firm where she worked.
    First he sent tapes and letters to all the senior executives at his wife's office, informing them of his wife's affair with their chief executive. Not content with this, he then hacked into the firm's computer and wrote an embarrassingly frank memo in his wife's name, to be distributed around the company. Not only did it admit to the affair but also gave intimate details about key staff and company directors. Her private life 'she' said was a disaster and had been 'virtually sexless' for seven years. The memo went on to suggest that there were to be many redundancies and that 'several senior staff are not justifying their enormous salaries'.
    He then sent the tapes and letters to the executive's wife, who said that 'it came like a bolt out of the blue'. Having been confronted by his wife, the lover admitted the affair and was promptly asked to leave the family home. He is no longer chief executive and is now in an overseas office. Mrs Smith resigned the day after the letter was sent out.
     

     
    A now-eminent solicitor assures us that this was not his idea. He had just joined the firm as articled clerk and his senior assistant solicitors devised a gentle revenge to put a rather tedious man in his place.
    This fellow had never arrived late for work, neither had he been off sick in thirty years. He would arrive at the office at 9.26 a.m., remove his bowler hat and hang it on the rack. When he left at 5.31 p.m. it was on with the bowler and off into the night. The lads did some homework. They examined the hat, procured an identical one but a couple of sizes smaller and effected an exchange with that of their victim. He left that evening and was not seen the following day.
    The boys in the office did not find out until later but the man was greatly puzzled and went to his doctor

     
    who could not explain his incredible expanding head -perhaps it was the weather or maybe he needed a haircut? When he came back to the office he gave no clue of his trauma but was well teased about being off work.
    Stage two was put into play. The small hat was replaced with one a couple of sizes larger than the original. He did not appear for work the next day either as he had by then been referred to a consultant. The lads returned the original hat thereafter, but safe in the knowledge that they had the other two should they ever need them again.
     

     
    A woman who heard herself described as 'the office tart' by a clerk, tried to avenge the insult by poisoning his drink with typing correcting fluid. She poured the white liquid into a carton of milk left on the desk of Michael Cavendish. He was taken to hospital after drinking the milk but was not seriously harmed. She was lucky - she had thought it would make him 'a bit ill'. The court was told that a teaspoonful of the fluid, containing trichloroethane, is enough to kill.
     

     
    'Some years ago - and in another life - I was features editor of the News of the World, when Derek Jameson was appointed editor. We did not get on. He, no doubt, found me insufferably arrogant. I found his Cockney yo-ho-ho bogus and irritating. After some weeks he called me in to review the workings of my department. It was not an easy discussion; he seemed to find many of my ideas inadequate for the great paper he intended to produce.
    'Finally, he leaned over his desk and said in his best Bow Bells accent: "You know Rod, don't you, that I'm Britain's first psychic editor?"
    ' "No Derek," I replied calmly. "I had no idea you were so blessed."
    ' “Oh yes," he said, warming to his