No Rock And Roll Fun

KEYS MAKES MAN'S LIFE HELL: Well done, Alicia Keys! Your secret plan to target poor sod J. D. Turner of Statesboro, Georgia, and make his life a misery has worked well. Alicia included a phone number from her old place in New York in the song Diary, which would have been fine - there's a taped message for anyone dull enough to actually ring the number - but she forgot to mention it was New York phone. Hence J D Turner, who has the same number in Georgia, has been getting up to twenty calls a day, most, we'd guess, from men who have already removed their trousers and have a box of Economy Facial Tissues primed. We'd assume the situation would be the same for anyone else unlucky enough to have 489-4608 on any other area code in the US. The best the phone company can do is suggest he set up his phone so that only approved callers can get through, but it seems a little unfair that Mr. Turner will now only be able to receive calls he knows he's expecting - what if his childhood sweetheart returns from Spain, or Mongolia, or Kansas, and tries to look him up?

Key's publicist Lois Najarian doesn't seem too fussed:

Using the number in the song was "just Alicia inserting herself into her music," Najarian said. "Certainly she is not targeting this man in Georgia."

You'll notice that doesn't actually sound like "Yeah, we made the elementary goof-up of sticking a real number on a recording without checking if it was in use or not, or using 555 the way the movies do, we're really sorry, and, frankly, we can't quite believe we were so bloody stupid in the first place."

The phone subscriber on the end of Pennsylvania 6-5000 was unavailable for comment. He'd left his phone off the hook.