Sweet Revenge: 200 Delicious Ways to Get Your Own Back

department and answered the telephone one day. A voice asked him to run through some figures which took quite a time, during which the tea trolley arrived.
    'You'll have to wait; the tea trolley is here,' said Hodgeson.
    'Do you know who it is here?' boomed a voice.
    Suddenly realising who it was, Hodgeson replied: 'Do you know who you are talking to?'
    'No!' came the strangled reply.
    'That's all I wanted to know!' said Hodgeson, slamming the telephone down.

     

     
    After two weeks in his office a temp had had quite enough of her boss. She appreciated that there was a certain anonymity to being a temp but she felt he really didn't need to treat her like an automaton/workhorse. He was particularly keen on time-keeping and made it clear that she should not go to the loo in his time, nor waste one second of his time, ever.
    On her final day he went out to lunch, leaving her with a pile of work which 'must be finished before you leave'. OK, she thought, but before she got down to it she decided she would have a little fun with his diary. She cancelled some lunches, erased a few meetings and rearranged others.
    She subsequently heard from her replacement of the devastation she left in her wake, as he turned up in Huddersfield for a meeting with a man who wasn't there; he waited in restaurants in vain; and left his mornings clear for meetings which simply did not happen.
    - with thanks to the Hon. Dickon Kindersley.
     

     
    A senior government minister was an excellent orator, thanks entirely to a civil servant who wrote all his speeches. So reliable was the material that the minister was able to stand and deliver his words without ever rehearsing them. The civil servant, however, was more than a little disgruntled that the minister had never had the courtesy to thank him so he decided to get his own back.
    Came the day of an important keynote speech and the minister took his place on the podium. He was moving the audience to new heights with his winning words when he turned the page and, to his horror, saw the words: 'You're on your own, you bugger!'
    - with thanks to Michael Grade.
     

     
    During the late 1970s, the teetering Labour Government, while operating without an overall parliamentary majority, was ruled with a rod of iron by Deputy Chief Whip Walter Harrison, MP for Wakefield. At a time when every vote was crucial he cracked the whip to make members show up and vote - he never missed a transgression and he never forgot a kindness. An MP was once absent for a vote and Walter discovered that he was in Crete. 'Aye, and when the bastard gets back he'll be in bloody concrete,' exploded the Whip.
    On one occasion he encountered a new TV political correspondent in the palace of Westminster. With no warning Harrison's hand reached out and gave the unsuspecting chap a nasty tweak of the balls. The poor man turned to Harrison, ashen faced and doubled up in pain, to hear him say, by way of explanation: 'And that's for nothing. Just imagine what'll happen to you if you ever cross me!'
    When the Speaker announces a Division - the Ayes to the Right, the Noes to the Left - there is usually a mad rush and, inevitably, there are late-comers who struggle to get through at the last split second before the doors close. Three sturdy Tory MPs developed a ploy to keep talking in the entrance to the Ayes lobby so that late Labour members would have to dodge and weave and hurdle to get in. Joint consultation did not improve the situation so the Labour Deputy Chief Whip perfectly timed a rugby tackle which threw the three Tory MPs into the Labour Lobby just before the 'door-closing'. Their votes were, therefore, counted with the government and this was immediately reported to the press. The three did not repeat their blocking tactics again.
    Another time Harrison entered the Strangers' Bar at the House of Commons and friends told him they had left him a 'Thick 'Un' (a double whisky). Harrison raised it to his mouth only to discover it was a trick glass - just a vision in a double-sealed container. Sweet revenge came quickly: the nuts and crisps, which were provided free to customers, were replaced with polystyrene parcel stuffing looking exactly like crisps. He promoted them for consumption to the original jokers telling them they would taste a lot better with sugar on them.
    These were times when sick or dying MPs from both sides of the House were brought in by ambulance to vote; so tenuous was the government's hold on power.