Vent your rage on SportsTalk

Thank you for choosing this column’s call centre in SportsTalk Ooouch at Newsday. If you would like to hear a really irritating automated voice droning on about sports rage in lieu of the ridiculous state of our cricket when we can only get a single pick on the West Indies team, and you have a touch-tone phone, press your star button twice now. If you do not have a star button on your telephone handset, tough. If you would like to update your obsolescent phone, just as we want to get rid of our obsolete cricket administrators (by this week hopefully) —- what is it, then, one of those old candlestick jobs? —- to a state-of -the-art touch-tone model, press one.

All our Sport operators are busy just now. Please wait. Your call will be answered in four minutes after we have had a break for tea otherwise; we at SportsTalk Ooouch would face the threat of a strike from most of our staff. Can you be brief and to the point on your needs and please try to limit the abusive language to only three words? By the way today we are discussing cricket and football administrators. If you cannot stand the treacle by the Football Advisor that we are playing for you while you wait, press two. Thank you for pressing two, but we are somewhat bust, as we cannot get anybody to talk on the Football Advisor; most people are too busy to waste time on the subject. While you wait, if you would like to know about a cheaper way of insuring your safety after quitting on the Advisor, press three. All our support Sports operators are busy just now. Please wait. Your call will be answered in five minutes after we have found enough people who know about sport in this country so that there can be some positive contribution. If you believe that you are going to pull the telephone socket out of the wall if you have to listen to one more flaming note of old man river in cricket, press four.

Thank you for pressing four. If you wish to complain to whoever is in charge of this raving Sporting madhouse, press five. Thank you for calling whoever is in charge of this raving madhouse. He is not at his desk just now but if you would like to put a brief message on his voice-mail, please press six and speak after the tone, and an automated voice will get right back to you before the end of the week, providing you are speaking in English tones and not in Hindi. You have reached whoever is in charge of this raving madhouse’s voice-mail. He is not taking messages right now but if you would like to hear extracts from Wes Hall’s Golden Syrup suite, press seven. Thank you for pressing seven. Hall is engaged as present but if you would like to know more about how you can take a Sportstarweekend break for two for less than the cost of this call in Jamaica you can call 1-800-Dehring or press eight.

All our operators are busy just now. Please wait. Your call will be answered in a fortnight. If you have had enough of this for a game of cricket on the beach in Barbados with Cozier, please hang up and try again. Thank you for choosing this column’s call centre in ToHeckwith-sports. If you would like to hear a really irritating automated voice droning on about sports rage, and you have a touch-tone phone, press your star button now. Thank you for calling a really irritating automated voice droning on about sportsrage. All our irritating automated voices are engaged just now, but if you would like to hear Dr Rudi Webster’s Music to Throw Up By, press one. Thank you for pressing one. Mr Webster is not at his violin at present, but if you would like to press two and leave a request on his voice mail, he will play it while you are waiting for somebody — anybody — to answer the damn phone. The number you have called has not been recognised. Please hang up and try again. Please hang up and try again. Please hang up and try again.

If you are not happy with the service we are providing, please join the queue because neither are we. However we are unable to get the support of the various sporting organisations in Trinidad, who are all afraid of their dictators that rule. They have only told us that if they are quoted, they will be left without a job, so we have to understand that independent thought is not a requirement to work in either football or cricket in Trinidad and Tobago. Thank you for choosing this column’s call centre in Sports-under-Repair. If you would like to hear a really irritating automated voice droning on about sportsrage, please ring this column’s call centre in SportsTalk Sports Ooouch and ask for Mabel. Visit cornelis-associates.com for the best website management and change management.