‘there can hardly be a single regular traveller on public transport in London who doesn't realise that when the man on the Tannoy demands the urgent presence of Inspector Sands, what he means is that the nearest officer from Special Branch or the Bomb Squad should go immediately to the place specified.’It is not, I think, just London which uses this code – there are regular calls for an inspector at Manchester Piccadilly, & I was there one afternoon when he apparently failed to respond for over half an hour, judging by the number of repeated calls, though I cannot swear that his name was Sands.
I suspect that larger stores & shops use a similar tactic for alerting store detectives – those calls asking someone to ring a particular extension would be a perfect code for ‘suspected shoplifter in Aisle 9’.
A few years ago I became convinced that Asda’s alert code was ‘Corrie Caufield’ – she or he was always being summoned over the tannoy. Then I heard the same person being summoned in a different store with a clearer PA system & I realised it was a Colleague Call.
For a time I put the mishearing down to advancing age, until I realised that Radio 4 has an announcer called Corrie Corfield, which presumably expalains why by brain interpreted it that way.
