[Neil Jones]

Made more confusing by the fact that all the other phone in references were edited out of that episode.

I suppose it's no worse than those old episodes of Police Interceptors where they censor out the people's identities but then leave one or two references in, and then show the programme on rotation for years. One particular favourite of mine had a drug dealer's forename bleeped but not the surname, then 30 seconds later the surname but not the forename.....

Reminds me of a story I heard about GSN's early years in the States... They repeatedly played out the "if you would like to apply" segments with address and phone number for a 20+ year old show by a long-defunct producer in LA, and the business who had taken over the premises (and phone number it seemed) reported receiving literally hundreds of calls and letters expressing interest! There must be something in the water over there...

Being caught doing something stupid on a police dashcam is one thing, but being pulled over by somebody from Police Interceptors/Road Wars/similar is probably one of the better public education tools available - "if you do something stupid and some bloke with a TV camera comes out, of the cop car, you won't be allowed to forget your moment of madness for the next 20 years. So don't do it."

Re: phone numbers, people are stupid. Simple as. Give them a phone number in any medium and they will ring it. Even the best known examples of 555 numbers (as you see in fiction) are often real (as the fictional range was 555-0100, and then somebody decided we're not having that, let's say Ghostbusters is on 555-2368). And then you have the likes of 867-5309 (a song) which somebody documented in every area code in the States whether it worked or not.

So to be honest, people phoning to enter a 20 year old show (or a competition it ran once) that's no longer in production doesn't surprise me. The only saving grace over here I suppose is that at the time those would have most likely used 0891 numbers to enter. Those haven't worked since PhONEday in 1995 and I don't think they go anywhere now.