Do vampires live in Poland? I’ll just ask the British Embassy
Officials reveal wackiest calls
FANGS can get a bit bizarre when the SOS phones ring at our embassies around the world.
Staff ’s diplomacy skills are sometimes stretched to the limit by crazy pleas for help from Brits abroad – from locating vampires to finding out who’s on Strictly.
Now the fed up Foreign Office has released a list of the wackiest calls made in 2018.
They include one from a man worried if there were vampires in Poland – because an online date had asked about his blood group.
Another caller in the Netherlands had just watched Braveheart and wanted the plot explained. One staffer in Rome almost dropped the phone when asked to arrange a wedding, recommend a florist – and get the happy couple tickets to see the Pope. Then a caller in the US asked who’d been voted off Strictly the previous night, while a holiday- maker in the Canaries wanted his hotel room changed because a stray cat had got in and peed on his bed.
A man in New Delhi called the embassy asking whether it sold vegetarian sausages, and in Bangkok a tourist who fell asleep during a massage wanted stunned officials to force the parlour to refund him.
One caller in Argentina asked for a list of local women he could marry.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “I regretfully confirm we are not able to offer advice on vampires or Strictly contestants. And our capacity to deploy veggie sausages remains sadly lacking.”
This year the FCO received more than 330,000 calls from Brits abroad, including 3,400 hurt, 4,900 arrested, and 29,600 who had lost passports. MP Stephen Timms says the biggest thank-you as he meets the surgeon who saved his life after a constituent stabbed him.
Nigel Tai, left, operated on the 63-year-old Labour man in East Ham, after he was rushed to Royal London Hospital in 2010. Islamic extremist Roshonara Choudhry, 21, stabbed Mr