The special button
When we were about 15 we were sent on a school trip to tour HMS Illustrious which was docked in Portsmouth. Upon arrival we were duly split into groups and trundled in different directions around the ship.

When our group got to the bridge the spotty sailor in charge said we could play around as everything was off. Cue me discovering the best button on board: the one with the little plastic cover that you have to lift in order to press it.

Pretending I was about to launch a missile I lifted the cover, gave myself a suitable Thunderbirds-style countdown and pressed.

For a millisecond nothing happened, then it all went a bit crazy. Things started bleeping, alarms started buzzing and our guide went a bit pale.

The captain ran up to the bridge and we were all hurriedly escorted onto the deck. Turned out that some of the emergency buttons weren’t as off as they could have been and I’d just put the whole of the Naval Base, and therefore the whole of the British Navy, on red alert.

It seems that I’d found the equivalent of the ship's panic button.

Two things happen when you press the button. The first is that it sends a signal saying “we’re under serious fucking attack – help!” the second is that it starts up some super radar thingy that, if used on land, would have sterilised all the women in Portsmouth.

Surely, stopping the local Pompey chavs from breeding (and I say this as a local) would have been worthy of the freedom of the city… but no, we were escorted off the ship by armed guard and our school was banned on the spot from ever setting foot on board again.




As a postscript – it was a crappy ban. Three years later I was a journalist and the captain of Illustrious contacted our newspaper to invite one of us on a press trip to the Gulf. Guess who went…



Penis length is fine, I just can’t get anyone pregnant…
( DickieDoesDallas eshews witty slogans, Fri 8 Dec 2006, 2:43, Reply)