Whisperer

The Editor’s good lady wife, Kathryn, received a message telling her that she had won a BD20,000 prize from Bahrain Duty Free and that all she had to do was pop along to UAE Exchange to arrange the transaction.

The fact that the message was in broken illiterate English helped give the game away. It stated: ‘for getting prize customer need to buy the voucher … We informed To you Again This message Don’t Share with Anyone For Fraud or Scam Reason’.

The con-merchants followed up the message with a telephone call urging Kathryn to deposit a BD43 administration fee into an account for the prize money to be released.

Kathryn politely told her that she didn’t have enough cash in her purse, so the hapless caller suggested: “How about BD23?’

The most common stereotype of a Yorkshire person is someone who is tight with money: there is a British saying that ‘a Yorkshireman is a Scotsman with all the generosity squeezed out of him’ which references how Scots are also stereotyped as being tight … but not as tight as Yorkshire folk.

Being a true Yorkshire lass, she tried to negotiate the amount down, finally offering a couple of dinars, to which the exasperated fiend put the phone down.

The official advice is to ignore phone calls, messages and repeated emails claiming that you have won a prize and report them to the authorities and the companies concerned.

Editor’s note: Thank you readers for the marvellous suggestions for a suitable name for the Planet Bakery & Café’s egg bread creation, as highlighted in last week’s Whisperer column. You really cracked it!

Some of our favourites included six-year-old Sair’s Chuzzie and his mum, Mariam Aftab’s, Bungg, Sarah Clarke’s Breakfast Bun on the Run, Jeffrey DaCosta’s Snack Roll-Egg and Camille Parsons’ Rockin’ Roll but the winner, was Chloe Gould’s Scrambled Bun. Next time you’re in Exhibitions Avenue, Chloe, the editor will treat you to one!