Help! I think my date might be a vampire ...and other calls our embassies have to deal with, including asking for results of Strictly
FORGET lost passports – vegetarian sausages, wrecked galleons and even vampires are keeping our embassy staff on their toes.
The “first responders” at embassies around the world are trained to help crisis-hit Britons abroad.
Usually this involves sudden illness or even arrests, but some tourists and expats have a much wider definition of the word “emergency”.
Take the man who called the hotline this year to ask if there were vampires in Poland because a prospective girlfriend had asked for his blood type before agreeing to a first date.
Or the caller in the USA who dialled in to ask which contestant had been voted off Strictly Come Dancing.
One man even called an embassy because he had found a 5ft piece of wood on a beach and was convinced it was from an 18th century Royal Navy galleon, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) revealed.
While many viewers were left scratching their heads at the historical inaccuracies in Mel Gibson’s hit film Braveheart, one called consular staff in the Netherlands to ask specific questions about the plot.
And over in Italy, one British couple decided the embassy staff would make the ideal wedding planners.
They asked them to help arrange their big day in Rome, down to arranging a visit to the Pope.
Love was clearly on the mind of a Briton in Argentina too, who called the embassy in Buenos Aires to demand a list of “suitable” women he could propose to. And in New Delhi, a caller demanded to know what time the British High Commission opened because he had heard it sold vegetarian sausages and wanted to buy some.
The FCO received more than 330,000 calls from Britons in trouble during 2018. More than 3,400 had been hospitalised and 5,000 had been arrested. Consular staff also issued 29,600 emergency travel documents to people who had lost passports.
In October, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced the diplomatic service’s biggest expansion for a generation, with new offices opening in Lesotho, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), the Bahamas, Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu.
Last night, an FCO spokesman said: “I can regretfully confirm that we aren’t able to offer advice on vampires or Strictly contestants, and our capacity to deploy veggie sausages remains sadly lacking.
“But in all seriousness, getting into trouble abroad can be daunting. If you find yourself in an emergency in another country, contact the nearest British Embassy, High Commission or Consulate and our staff will do everything they can to help.”
A nine-year-old called police after Santa Claus did not leave even one of the Christmas presents he had asked for in his letter. Two officers in Zetel, Germany, helped the youngster fill out an official complaint form against Father Christmas.