Well you better go catch it! Ha ha. AFAIK, the original Bart Simpson type telephone prank. The only other one I’ve heard is: “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?” “Well, you better let him out!” or something like that. Were there any others? Prince Albert was a brand of tobacco.
These sound like Dad jokes. I think all the Bart phone pranks would ask if [pun person] was in the bar, in order to get Moe to shout out the name and sound stupid. Subverted when Hugh Jass was in the bar and came to the phone.
Maybe not quite the same thing, but back in high school, if we knew a fellow student was out and about late on a weekend night, we would call their house and say we were Detective So-and-So, and their kid had been arrested. We needed a parent to come get him.
Now they make that call from overseas. And want gift cards.
Some of the earliest prank calls were similar to the ones Bart made to Moe’s - with a twist.
By the early 1900s, pranksters were using “While You Were Out” slips to trick people into becoming prank callers themselves. They’d leave a message saying that a particular person had telephoned, and how that person supposedly could be reached. When the victim returned the call, they’d find themselves asking for, say, a Mr. Train at Union Station, a Mr. Fish at the New York Aquarium, or—in Providence again—a Mr. Graves at the North Burial Ground.
“Is Joe Wall there?”
“No.”
“Is Frank Wall there?”
“No.”
“Are there any Walls there?”
“No.”
“Then what’s holding your roof up?”
As memorialized by Blink-182;
“ Hello. Is John in the house?”
“No.”
“Well, where do you go then? In the sink?”
My favorite as a kid:
“Is Joe there?”
“You have the wrong number.”
…two minutes later:
“May I speak to Joe?”
“No, you must have the wrong number.”
…two minutes later:
“Can I please speak to Joe?”
“I keep telling you, you have the wrong number!”
…two minutes later:
“This is Joe, did I get any calls?”
We tried a couple based on the name of the person we were calling.
Looked in the phone book for someone with the last name of Green.
It was something like.
Is this Mr. Brown.
No, it’s Mr, Green.
Sorry, wrong color.
And based on the response we were not the only ones who called a family with the last name of Christmas and asked for Mary.
We used to call a bowling alley. And when the guy answered, I’d ask “do you have 16 pound balls?”
If he said,“yes,” I’d then ask him: "How in the hell do you walk?
“With a wheelbarrow, why?”
“Your mom gives me a hand.”
Shortly after I moved here (which was quite a few years ago) I answered the phone and heard a young voice on the phone ask something that sounded like:
“Is Mr. Walzenflors there?”
Me, giving them accidentally a perfect leadin: “No, sorry, no Walzenflors here.”
Voice, in a chorus of giggles: “Then what’s holding your roof up?” Click, they hung up.
I giggled too.
No, but Joe Mama is here.
Do you have Prince Albert in a can? You better let him out.
No, but I have Old Grand-Dad in a bottle.
Do you have Queen Elizabeth in a box?
Too soon?
Not quite a phone prank like these others, but it did involve a phone. I’ve detailed it on the Board before:
One year right after Christmas back in high school, a friend and I thought up calling the local newspaper and putting an ad in the classifieds that said: “Don’t throw your Christmas tree away. I’ll buy it!” And gave a friend’s phone number. It was pure chance that we called the ad in on a Friday, meaning it ran all weekend before their offices reopened on Monday to cancel it. The lady who took our ad said she was dying with curiosity about what we were going to do with all those trees, and thinking fast I said: “Uh, I, uh, I’m going to resell them for firewood.” “Oh! That’s a great idea! I never would have thought of that.” We called the friend’s house ourselves posing as someone with a tree to sell, and his mother said there must have been some sort of mix-up at the paper and that their phone had been ringing nonstop all weekend. The friend kept absolutely silent about it at school the next week, waiting to see who would break and mention it. We never did, and he never brought it up. So, Steve, if you’re out there somewhere reading this right now, it was me and Robert (you know Robert who).