Journalists on The News, Portsmouth, rang HoldTheFrontPage to tell us about the story of the day on the Hampshire Police voicebank.

The recording which was played to them yesterday had a female voice saying: “No information available”, then a man saying “Hampshire Police”.

The recording then cut to a telephone call from an angry Mrs McKenzie, of Peterhead, ringing up to complain about “delicatessen food” she had bought from Safeway.

“It’s absolutely green and I would like someone to call back,” said the woman, leaving her address and telephone number. “Thank you. Goodbye”, she signed off before the line went dead.

One journalist said: “This is all we’ve been getting when we ring to find out what’s happening. I can’t imagine how the telephone call got on there.”

In fact, it turned out that the unfortunate Mrs McKenzie had telephoned a health watchdog hotline with her complaint several weeks ago. Safeway later replaced the chorizo sausage, which was the cause of her anger, and she forgot all about it.

Yesterday, BT somehow relayed her message to EVERY police headquarters and to THOUSANDS of people who own pagers.

As a result, she was bombarded with dozens of telephone calls from puzzled strangers including doctors, nurses and businessmen wondering why she had called them.

BT later deleted the rogue message.

Hampshire Police said: “It’s bizarre”.

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