Sweet Revenge: 200 Delicious Ways to Get Your Own Back

owner disguised a winning horse with boot polish and entered it into a novice race. Naturally it won, bringing substantial gains to the owner and trainer.
    'Quick!' said the owner to one of the lads, 'get rid of the horse!'
    Unfortunately, he took the owner literally. Several days later the owner asked to see the horse and the lad said proudly: 'Don't worry, I shot it and put it down a mine shaft.'
     

     
    When Ernie Perkins bought an old gravel pit and started commercial tipping, his neighbours began to complain. It all came to a head when Gloucestershire County Council ordered Mr Perkins to cease operations, even though the pit was not full. He announced that he would take his revenge, and did so, by investing in 3,000 pigs. 'I'll teach them what stink really means,' he said, as several score prime, swill-eating, slurry-producing pigs were unloaded on to his land.

     
    'After three happy years he suddenly behaved monstrously, during December. In order to leave it all behind and get on with my life revenge was important.
    He is an artistic man, obsessive and prone to panic reactions. He is also an expert plantsman and has a beautiful garden alongside a side street, with a 4'6" fence. Slugs send him into paroxysms of rage. I waited until May when the plants were up, growing and juicy, by which time I had devised a fitting act of vengeance. With the help of a friend we leafleted all the surrounding streets with the following notice:
     
NON TOXIC SLUG CONTROL RESEARCH PROJECT
 
DO YOU HATE KILLING SLUGS?
 
Natural scientific research welcomes your healthy, unwanted slugs.
Please place them in our research garden centre at:
 
5, GEORGE STREET,
CHICHESTER
 
Easy access and parking
Research results will be published in the November edition of Green Magazine.
     
    'Mud- and rain-smudged notes were put through his letter box with information about where the slugs had been placed. Ladies with flowing hands wrote from afar, one thus: "I have put 36 slugs in your left-hand border.
    Such a pretty garden. Are you sure you are doing the right thing?" He has no idea how many slugs he was given. I felt much better.”
     

     
    A jilted banker had a poster made up and photocopied with his unfaithful girlfriend's picture, bearing the caption 'Have you seen this Dog?' He nailed it on to trees all over west London.

     

Telephone Trouble
     

     
    'Sweet is revenge - especially to women.'
    Lord Byron, 1788-1824
     

Telephone Trouble
     
    A woman scorned worked out that the way really to upset her control-freak former lover was through his address book. She carefully changed all the telephone numbers, postcodes and street numbers around. The threes became eights, the ones became fours and Cs became Os.
    - with thanks to Royal correspondent Ingrid Seward.
     

     
    Several years ago, TV personality Sarah Greene returned home from a couple of days' filming to find fifty-six messages on her telephone answering machine. When she played them back they were all from the same person who had obviously heard her husband, presenter Mike Smith, on the answerphone tape and thought it was a terrific wheeze to hear it over and over again.
    As she listened through the messages, keen to hear whether any of their friends or colleagues had been able to get through, it became clear that her mystery caller worked near a company's switchboard. She could hear people answering telephones with: 'Good Morning, Superglaze,' in the background.
    Sarah looked them up in the phone book and discovered they were a large glazing and double-glazing company. A simple complaint to the management for timewasting and blocking their answerphone tape didn't seem like much fun and Sarah and Mike felt like a little light revenge.
    Sarah put on her best plummy voice and asked to speak to the chairman or managing director. She introduced herself as Jane Tompkinson, PA to the chairman of British Telecom. Could she, she asked, arrange a high level meeting to discuss a large contract that they were putting out to tender? She could hear the growing excitement amongst the staff and the general manager was fawning and ingratiating as he asked whether 'Jane' could divulge the nature of the contract. 'Jane' replied that at this stage it was highly confidential but was he familiar with the Telecom Tower? Sarah could almost hear the champagne corks popping.
    After a suitable interval Mike and Sarah came clean to the now bitterly disappointed general manager and left him to deal