It’s all a bit Mission Impossible, really. The phone travels in a small silver case, ferried from person to person and place to place, with instructions that it will ring at 1.15pm sharp.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is simply to answer. The mysterious caller asks a series of questions, and after two minutes, the phone call ends and the phone is passed to the next recipient, for the process to be repeated the next day. Importantly, nothing self-destructs.
The cell phone in question belongs to OJ Borg, a British radio host for BBC Radio 2. It is the Midnight Caller phone, and from Tuesday to Friday at 1.15pm New Zealand time (2.15am in the UK), OJ rings from the other side of the world to yarn on air with whomever happens to be on the other end.
The device came to Motueka via Nelson, passed to The Guardian’s Fiona Summerfield via a friend of hers. She chatted to OJ about life in Motueka, putting a word in for our own Guardian newspaper (apparently the UK also has one too; imitation is the sincerest form of flattery).
The next day, the device was in the hands of Motueka’s Claire Hutt, who admitted to OJ that she had spent the morning in a rather unglamorous meeting focused on the restoration of Motueka’s historic wharf.
“I was actually going to say to you that I’ve been skydiving,” she said with a laugh, and the host picked up the ruse and ran with it as the pair discussed her experiences at 13,000 feet.
The little silver box is now on its way to Golden Bay, the phone charged and ready for its next round of missions. To listen, go to www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_two#noapp
