him or not.
Tired of the relentless barrage, she eventually summoned an antiques expert. If they were genuine, he told her, they would be worth £2,000 each but, since they were not, they might fetch around £100 each if she were lucky. The decision was easy: she kept absolutely quiet about their being fake and sold her husband the lot for £16,000.
Michael Howard of Leeds changed his name by deed poll to Yorkshire Bank Plc Are Fascist Bastards after being charged £20 for a £10 overdraft. The bank has now asked him to close his account and Mr Bastards has asked them to repay the 69p balance by cheque - made out in full in his new name.
A good few years ago a friend of Dorien Manville-Hales became thoroughly fed up with the barrage of letters he received from a high street bank requesting that his £10 or £20 overdraft be settled or his cheques would be bounced. Since he had a fairly good pedigree and his family was clearly not short of money, he was sincerely irked by the pettiness of the bank and its letters. Muttering things about his mother's jewellery, safety and insurance he asked the bank whether he could open a safety deposit box, which was duly granted.
Some time later he walked into the bank and asked to take his box out. He went through all the barriers, procedures and checks, took his box into the windowless room and was left to his own devices. Finally he declared himself finished and the box was put back. Several days later all the people with access to the strong room began to complain about the smell. Shortly afterwards, clients too started to complain: it became worse and worse and really became intolerable. Bank officials investigated the smell and narrowed it down to twelve boxes which, in the circumstances, had to be opened.
Written authority had to be sought from box owners who could be contacted, and the procedure for opening a box without the owner present was a complicated business involving Notaries public and a main board director but at last they managed to get the twelve boxes open.
When they finally discovered which was the offending box the bank wrote to our friend the owner asking why he had put four trout and a camembert into a safety deposit box. His reply was a classic: 'Dear Sirs, Thank you so much for your letter. You have put my mind at rest. I was due to have a dinner party that evening and I have been wondering ever since where I mislaid my shopping.'
Revenge by National Lottery has apparently been perpetrated. Iain Madeley arranged to hold a dinner party one Saturday and invited, among others, a friend who owed him some money and always had a good excuse why he
could not pay it back. This was early in 1995 when the National Lottery was still quite a novelty so, while drinks were being served, Iain handed each guest a lottery ticket for a little fun.
Eight o'clock arrived and the television was switched on amid feverish excitement; even more so when five of the debtor's numbers came up. There were cheers and congratulations, lots of bottles were opened and toasts proposed. With a great flourish he produced his chequebook and generously repaid his debt with interest. Iain hid a smile as he pocketed the cheque: he had played a video recording of the previous week's lottery numbers and had carefully chosen five of the previous week's numbers especially for his friend.
By the time his friend went to claim his winnings, the cheque had been honoured by express clearance.
'When I was in my twenties and still one of the youngest auctioneers in London, I was conducting an auction of nineteenth-century European paintings. Amongst the crowd of gallery owners, collectors and private punters was a German dealer who normally bought cheaper paintings of all schools and styles: English or Spanish, cattle or mothers-with-babies were all meat and drink to him.
'Whenever a painting was selling for less than about £500, a careful glance at him and the
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