To those of you that don't know I work as a driver for Addison Lee, we occasionally pick up well known people/politicians/'slebs' etc, nothing unusual there and it often amuses me when, on certain accounts, there is a message with the booking saying "On no account is the driver to ask for photos/autographs from the passenger" when it is usually a spotty oik from some teenage band who can barely string a coherent sentence together. Today, on one of the quietest weeks of the year, I was just about to knock off early when an 'ASAP' job came through from Brook Green to Farnborough Airport. Nice one I thought, I arrived at the gated estate and was met by the client who gave me a Vodafone SIM card with the instructions of who to deliver it to at the airport and that I had one hour to get there (no pressure then). I was to ring the recipient on arrival for him to collect. On the way up I was just thinking to myself who would be nutty enough to hire a cab to bring a SIM card all that way, the cost on account would be near £150, must be a pretty important SIM card. Luckily, the traffic was fairly clear today and I made it in 50 minutes. As I approached I rang the recipient and it went straight to voicemail, not a good sign. Farnborough being a private airport has security gates at the entrance, I pulled up and said who I was delivering to, a bloke called Oscar. "Oh, the Chelsea footballer Oscar" said the security guard, the penny dropped, now I know who was nutty enough to hire a cab for a SIM card. He waved me through and told me where to find them. I walked into the swish little terminal and could see the whole Chelsea team lounging around in the private area. One of their 'chaperones' took the card and thanked me and off I went. Shame, if I'd known who it was for I'd have found a traffic jam...
Sooper, PM me your phone number if you're on duty on either the 15th or 17th, we're going to need a cab at some point while in London, and it'd be nice to keep the money in the family!
Bugger, it would have been good meeting you too. I'm going to try to meet as many as possible before the Hull game though. Have fun mate, I always enjoyed Farnborough when I could get time off to go to it.
Great story Sooper. You could have fried the SIM card before handing it over rendering it worthless. You might even have got a second job out of it and another £150
Like it Sooper, I like many on here put in a long hard shift just to be skint. Bill must now be a multimillionaire as we give all our money to him.
I heard a story today about Mike Ashley's daughter getting a cab to and from the local shops to buy a packet of ***s. Gave the driver £50.
I was in a card game many years ago and ran out of ***s. I called a cab and got them to bring me twenty No.6 and paid the price of the cigs plus two times minimum fare.
I am told from a very good source that a certain Premier League Football player, tipped a young lady (my mates daughter) a £50 note for holding the door open for him so he could wander outside for a ciggie. I guess when you reach that level, money really doesn't mean a lot.
I am guessing you are talking about the airshow. I grow up very close to Farnborough and have spent time living there. I have never heard any one say they have enjoyed going there.
Some years ago there was an outcry that Elton John spent hundreds (possibly thousands) of pounds each week on freshly cut flowers for him home. I could never understand why the controversy. I would prefer that our rich and famous splashed the cash in the most extravagant manner all the time, as this circulates the monies, keeps the average Joe in honest labour and economy buoyant. If they just stuck the money in the bank then control of it rests with suits and you can bet they'd make the most of what it can do for them. No, I say let the Oscars and Reginalds of this world continue to fritter some of their (perhaps not so) hard-earned on getting the rest of us to drive their SIM cards around and arrange the marigolds.
Before I was found out, I got away with being FD of an aerospace company in Farnborough for seven years. I have to say that I rather enjoyed the Air Show, although it also has to be said that the week or so leading up to it was better, as this was when the pilots did one or two things that they couldn't do in the show week itself because of crowd safety issues. We used to get up onto the roof of our offices to watch and it was quite spectacular when the Airbuses came low over us. On one occasion our CEO was walking across the car park when a Sukhoi came low over the buildings before making a vertical climb immediately above his head. He said the top of his bald head was super-heated by the afterburners and it felt as though he was being hammered into the Tarmac by the thrust. It was always great fun observing the anoraks at the Show itself, particularly those hellbent on collecting as many free souvenir pens, stress balls, badges, hats and pamphlets as possible. On my last visit the CEO of our parent company took over our hospitality chalet for a day to entertain city investors. He got stupidly and arrogantly pissed, saw me and right in front of his guests said, "Hello Uber, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you **** off and ****ing count something?" Happy days.
