The Most Audacious Thing You've Ever Gotten Away With

[Suttonpubcrawl]

Since becoming poverty stricken dole scum I've started riding the DLR and bendy buses a lot, because you basically don't have to pay for them. I actually don't think this counts as scamming TfL, because they have scammed so much money out of me in the form of tickets I lost which they refused to replace, or days I didn't use on weekly travelcards. They've got much more money out of me over the years than they should have for the services I've used, so I think I'm only evening up the balance.

[butnut]

If you're ever caught without a ticket anywhere in west London (or further if you're feeling lucky) just say you got on at Barnes Bridge. Unless it's changed over the winter, there is literally no way to buy a ticket from that station, not even a permit to travel machine!

The old permit-to-travel trick is a nice one. Buy a ticket for 5p late at night from such a machine, and even if the ticket man comes round, he can't fine you as you have a legal ticket. Saved me loads of money when I travel to my parents. Only works from smaller stations though.

[niat]

A friend used to call the London bendy buses "Ken's Free Bus", as he never paid (neither did I, come to think of it). There was absolutely no chance of getting caught during rush hour as the buses are so full, no inspector could work their way along, checking tickets.

[Evil Knevil]

A friend used to call the London bendy buses "Ken's Free Bus", as he never paid (neither did I, come to think of it). There was absolutely no chance of getting caught during rush hour as the buses are so full, no inspector could work their way along, checking tickets.

That's funny, because in the past 4 months, using the bus most weekdays, I've been inspected 3 times. They hall the bus over the curb and do systematically check everybody's tickets. Maybe it's just my route (73)

[sick as a pike]

Maybe it's just my route (73)

That's my usual bus too!  Hey, we could have a bus party!  Who else gets the 73?  
Mr E.T.Teenagers?

[SetToStun]

When I was about 19, my dad took me to the motorcycle grand prix (I think it was at Silverstone). When we arrived, the ticket man came to the passenger side (which was where I was sitting) and dad leaned over and asked for one adult and a child. The ticket guy said that child tickets ended at age 13. My dad said that was OK, because I was 12 and a half. Bearing in mind that I am 6' 1" tall, had shoulder-length blond hair, hadn't shaved for a week, was wearing a bike jacket over which I had a denim waistcoat covered in studs and patches and a ripped up Motorhead t-shirt. knackered jeans and combat boots, I was somewhat surprised when ticket-dude shrugged and said "OK".

[mrpants]

Maybe it's just my route (73)

That's my usual bus too!  Hey, we could have a bus party!  Who else gets the 73?  
Mr E.T.Teenagers?

I occasionally get it to ferry me from Oxford Street to halfway up Tottenham Court Road where I catch the 134.  Yes, I am very lazy.

[butnut]

Gah! I hate you one-stop bus users! Worse is seeing people wait for 10 minutes for a bus and then go one stop. Madness! They'd be home much quicker if they walked. I'm excluding the old, frail and ill from this, as they have some excuse, but for anyone else, it's just plain lazy. Especially if they make the bus stop just to let them off - it slows everyone else down!

[Lady Beaner]

My boss gets the 73 and he is always complaining about the ticket inspectors... must be summat about that route. I get the 29 from norf to central, and have not been checked once in the past year!

[Artemis]

Ticket inspectors on virgin trains have turned into right little nazis. This one guy who was sitting opposite me a few weeks go accidently got on the train next to the one he was supposed to get on and ended up going to London instead of Oxford. It was an honest mistake and the inspector even said he thought it was an accident, then walloped him with a £165 fine! When the guy protested that this seemed an extraordinarily large amount of money, the inspector started lecturing him like a right cunt, going on about how he doesnt make the rules and it's the customer's responsibility to look where he's going before he "just gets on any old train". All of us in the carriage thought it was way over the top but like good British people, we supressed our feelings until it was too late to express them effectively.

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

I don't get the 73. I live next to the statioon so get the train instead. When I have got the 73 in the past there's always been someone one it who is talking to either themselves or everyone else on the bus and I've prayed that they won't try to talk to me. One of the times it was a fellow who would comment loudly as to whether each person getting on and off was swiping their Oyster card. The bastard commented when I got on and just sat down. Little did he know, I use a classic, cardboard travelcard. I wanted to kill him. Or at least tell him off for being presumptuous. I didn't though, I just sat there and fantasised about kicking him off the bus and everyone cheering and a sexy lady being very impressed and sexing me.

[Sherringford Hovis]

Back OT, here's my top ten in no particular order of audaciousness:

1 Convincing my Quartermaster Sergeant that my L1A1 was actually in the back of the Land Rover that went up in flames. After all, you never know when you're going to need a spare rifle...

2 My ‘Stitch Jones’ escape â€" somewhat like the jive-ass Marine carrying a bailed Clint Eastwood out of the drunk tank in Heartbreak Ridge: I managed to inveigle my skinny arse out of a Spanish police cell by volunteering to carry one end of a stretcher bearing a rather fat bloke with a burst appendix to a waiting ambulance. After being waved through six or seven locked doors, I just melted away across the car park while eight La Policia and Guardia Civil officers bickered in quite a camp fashion among themselves about exactly who would get to escort the prisoner to a hospital that was, by their own account, packed to the rafters with "enfermeras bonitas".

3 Persuading my microcerebral publisher that I should be given some hefty freelance payments for writing things in a magazine that by any sane person's reckoning should have been part of my salaried day job.

4 If you’re ever in the position where it looks likely that your passions could imminently be shared between two lissom ladies simultaneously, being ambidextrous enough to pop two sets of bra clasps at the exact same moment while in the tangle of a group hug can certainly sweeten the deal somewhat.

5 Getting five violently pissed up and angry Irish travellers to spare my miserable life by telling them that "Sure, lads; you'll probably kill me, but not before I cripple two three of you permanently. We don't want to make anyone's mothers cry today, so let's have another whiskey, eh?" I got so screamingly drunk with them that night, I ended up at one of their weddings about six months later. A word to the wise â€" if invited into the caravan of any itinerant folk, always offer to remove your shoes before entering, as traversing their hard standings is usually like tapdancing through several acres of cowpat.

6 Every time my dog obeys my unreasonable demand to “roll over!” or “pirouette!”, I feel guilty that I’ve ruined what was once a beautiful animal. The feral baldy ball of snappy hate that I brought back from the dog’s home was so much more proud and noble a creature than the perennially overindulged and pathetically ingratiating biscuit junkie currently sprawled on a man-size beanbag in front of the TV licking the space where his nutsack used to be.

7 DJing â€" it’s all a scam these days, I used to be a proper choonsmith on the 1s and 2s years ago, but gave it all up when I got proper job, mortgage etc. I’ve got absolutely no idea what I’m doing most of the time, and I rarely spin anything that was recorded in the last 20 years. I cheat with a laptop far too much unless it’s an exclusively house and techno bash; I suck up to the audience terribly by playing requests (I’ve even been known to specially download something during the course of a set specifically to slip it in…) What with the ginormous amounts of free booze I manage to consume, combined with the eye-popping gyrations of scantily clad young ladies clouding my attention, it’s amazing I manage to keep my shit together. Someone must like my noodlings though: I’ve been playing three-hour+ sets two and three nights most weeks for over a year, but I still feel like a big fakey fake.

8 If discovered in flagrante delicto by the boyfriend of the girl who is currently noisily playing a rousing tune on your pink oboe in the bathroom at her birthday party at their shared flat, you can instantly turn what could be tricky tumulteousness into happy happenstance by accompanying a big pantomime wink with giving him a manly embrace and â€" maintaining a keen grip on the back of his neck â€" firmly planting his indignant face between her thighs. The added advantage for me in this situation was that I now had someone to help me lift her gently out of her wheelchair when the ensuing mêlée reached the bedroom…

9 Getting you cynical verbiwhores to read this far through what must seem like a flight of fancy. My life just happens to unfold almost phantasmagorically â€" I’ve gotten away with some much more audacious things than posted here, but they tend to swerve away from being amusing peccadilloes more into the region of severe transgressions. Besides, if no one finds out, it ain’t a crime, right? You’ll have to wait for the “Are you a totally insane, amoral bastard?” thread to be stared by someone for me to recount how terrified I was that Mrs Patel might catch me nicking fizzy cola bottle penny sweets from the Wavy Line store…

10 Over-use of the ellipsis…

[Space ghost]

[mrpants]

Gah! I hate you one-stop bus users!

Heh, hey - at least I admit I'm lazy!  Actually if I do get the 73 to Tottenham Court Road, it usually is from around Selfridges - so I'm not too bad!

[danielsan]

A couple of years ago me and my mate worked on this piss poor cheaply made football show which went out in Asia. Budget was so low that we couldn't even afford to use library music, so we had to commission someone to write something and just used endless versions of that throughout the whole show - very tedious it was to listen to.

Anyway, redundancies were being made and everyone was losing their jobs so we thought, fuck it, lets go out with a bang. So the last ever show was a very self indulgent affair and just consisted of me and my mate fucking about and we ended by doing a five minute closer of me and him just walking to the job centre and used Radiohead's "High and Dry" to accompany it. Nobody said anything, presume its cos nobody used to watch it. My boss thought it was funny until he asked for the 'real' show, and we had to tell  him this was the only version and had already been broadcast. As I say, it was very self indulgent but made us laugh

For the same programme I also used Premiership footage all the way through it, but can't say we got away with that as we got a cease and desist order from ESPN. Ooops

[butnut]

Gah! I hate you one-stop bus users!

Heh, hey - at least I admit I'm lazy!  Actually if I do get the 73 to Tottenham Court Road, it usually is from around Selfridges - so I'm not too bad!

Yeah okay, I'll let you off - in central London the bus is stopping every stop anyway. It's those lazy fuckers out here in deepest South London who stop the bus after one stop and are the only people to get off. Aggghhghgghh

[neveragain]

Walking out of a restaurant three quarters of the way through a meal because I'd forgotten my money. Should have told the others I was doing that but there you go, serves them right for going to the toilet.

[Pepotamo1985]

"Ken's Free Bus"

The bendy buses, in parcticular the 38 and 73, are virtually gratis. Handy, because they stop right outside my house and transport one to all salient parts of London. Occasionally, there's a large gaggle of ticket inspectors avec BTP scum loitering outside Angel station waiting to ensnare ticket evaders, but they only check the tickets of people on the bus, not people getting off.

Another good wheeze for exiting Waterloo overground without paying for a ticket is to use the steps on each platform which lead to the underground. You can exit easily via the Waterloo & City line entrance.

[sick as a pike]

"Ken's Free Bus"

Occasionally, there's a large gaggle of ticket inspectors avec BTP scum loitering outside Angel station waiting to ensnare ticket evaders, but they only check the tickets of people on the bus, not people getting off.

Ah, I've seen them do the opposite on the 73- stand there in their reflective jackets very obviously.  People without tickets see this and get off, expecting the inspectors to get on, but they don't.

on topic- I'm afraid once hurled a concrete block through a shop window in order to get some cigarettes late at night.

Why are British Transport Police 'scum' by the way?

[Pepotamo1985]

Why are British Transport Police 'scum' by the way?

Much like the City of London Police, they seem to glean such joy from fucking people over. I was once on a late train and several burst into the carriage, aggressively searching one and all. I couldn't find my ticket, and got frogmarched off the train at the next stop, and placed in handcuffs. They searched me, all the while talking about how I could go to prison for a year, or face a massive penalty fine. They then happened upon my ticket, let me out of the cuffs, and fucked off. It transpired the train I was on was the last one home. They didn't even apologise.

Conversely, when I got arrested on suspicion of criminal damage in February, the coppers were loveliness personified, cracking jokes and chatting with me like I was a nice human being. One even went out of his way to let me go home early.

[Artemis]

Walking out of a restaurant three quarters of the way through a meal because I'd forgotten my money. Should have told the others I was doing that but there you go, serves them right for going to the toilet.

Oooh, I've done that too. I was in a sushi restaurant and it dawned on us half way through that neither me or my companion had any money to pay for the meal. We were the only people in the restaurant at the time so one of us nipped out and the other (me) feigned surprise at not having my credit card on me. An "oh, it must be in the car" and "can you hang on while I pop out and get it" later, and we scarpered down the street. Not my proudest moment, but we did get away with it.

It must be very easy to simply get up and leave without paying in places, if you're that way inclined. I often think hotels are easy to do that in, if you give them false details and as long as any deposit isn't too high.

[pandadeath]

I almost got away with having a quick piss out of the window of my History class.

[Artemis]

I almost got away with having a quick piss out of the window of my History class.

At what point did you realise you hadn't gotten away with it?

[Vaguely Phallic]

My train frivolity (thanks to the other posts for jogging my memory): the last Cardiff to Paddington train was delayed so they offered free taxis to passengers' final destinations. I think it's something they have to do, maybe some girl got killed once due to having to walk home thanks to the late train and her family wrote to Watchdog. Well I don't take black cabs much due to them being a rip off. But I enjoy their smell and fancied a jaunt, so called up my mate and got the taxi to drive me to St Albans! The best thing is I hadn't even bought a ticket - until recently you could buy them on the train without any hassle.


Also, I once did a medical trial and had to stay at the place for four weeks straight. Because this was last year when those people got really sick for doing another trial, I didn't tell my family in case they got worried. So I'd phone them in the ward and get my fellow inmates to make "pubby" sounds, desperately trying to disguise the beeping equipment. They weren't very good actors, and I wonder if my mum didn't think I had made a bad choice to go out with a girl who would say "this is a nice PUB isn't it. Would you like another drink from the BAR before we go to another PUB?"

PS What's happened to the photo forum? Everything's gone messed up. Did someone post something illegal/again? Edit: OK.

[Buck Naked]

Ooh, you've reminded me about the last drug trial I did, which involved wearing a small machine wired up to your chest so they could measure heart stuff. I got about a third of the way through the study when a very serious looking guy came and told me that I had an extremely common issue with my heart involving an occasional tiny delay in the conduction of electricity passing through it that ruled me out of the study. The good thing is, because they withdrew me, they were contractually obliged to pay me compensation for the full thing.

[MissInformed]

I got about a third of the way through the study when a very serious looking guy came and told me that I had an extremely common issue with my heart involving an occasional tiny delay in the conduction of electricity passing through it that ruled me out of the study.

Long Q-T syndrome?