Chugger chokes Mugger.
‘Give a Smile UK’ describes itself as a ‘social enterprise’. In practice that means they take local people who have been ‘affected by the recession’ and unable to find full or even part-time employment and train them in the dark arts of chugging in communication skills, sales techniques, and send them out onto the local high street to persuade local people to part with their cash in order to provide other local people with a free holiday.
They dress them as Robocop, a mono chrome Batman or even a multi-coloured Batman. Judging by their web site, with dozens of grateful families thanking them for their holiday – they are highly successful. Whether they are paid or not is unclear.
What is clear is that they don’t like competition from ‘amateurs’, especially not amateurs using physical force.
There was chugger Antonio Cortes dressed in his full multi-coloured Batman outfit, having his 2,99p breakfast in Weatherspoons (where else, dressed like that?) when a woman’s screams were heard coming from the direction of the local cash point.
“I went up to give him his large English breakfast and he had gone.
“He just flew through the fire exit. It was quite a surprise.”
Da da da da, da da da da……Batman!!!!
Antonio, 32, who is fundraising as Superman for the Give a Smile social enterprise for struggling families, said:
“I heard screaming and saw a woman in distress.
“A man had just tried to rob her and was strangling her at the cash point”
Antonio said the villain looked like a ‘desperate guy’ who had been drinking all morning, and was ‘walking away really fast’.
The ‘villain’ – aged 54, drunk, and walking ‘really fast’ was arrested by police after Antonio sat on him.
“I feel like a real life superhero, but I just did what anyone else would have done.
“It feels good knowing that I have saved someone. It’s scary to think that in broad daylight, someone can do that.
“It is nice to know that that man is no longer on the streets.”
Such excitement in Weatherspoons at 11am!
It must be the ‘Lottery effect’ – everyone thinks they can be a chugger these days.
Hey! Let’s be careful out there.
- Margaret Jervis
January 29, 2016 at 8:05 am -
This is all very confusing because Give a Smile are a social enterprise registered as a limited company and not as a charity. Their business is door to door sales it seems. Director James Hannon is a surveyor described on one company check site as a ‘pedlar’. So in what capacity are they authorised to to solicit donations?
- Cloudberry
January 29, 2016 at 12:35 pm -
This is all very confusing because Give a Smile are a social enterprise registered as a limited company and not as a charity.
It does seem odd. Companies House doesn’t seem to have a record for a “Give a Smile” or for the company No 08037364 indicated on the Company Check site. The web domain registrant has an address in Bermuda: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=giveasmileuk.co.uk- Cloudberry
January 29, 2016 at 12:50 pm -
Correction: It is on the Companies House site under that name/number. Silly me!
- Cloudberry
- Cloudberry
- Bandini
January 29, 2016 at 11:30 am -
What a strange business! The testimonials on their site are interesting, the hard-up families who find themselves the lucky recipients of a free mini-break:
“…there was just a few minor things missing from caravan like tin-opener and not enough plates but as we had to do two journeys to get there as my husband disabled too we was able to bring them from home…”
Averaging almost one ‘winner’ a week… Hmmm, is there just a single caravan somewhere, with a crafty owner who has found a particularly lucrative way of exploiting his investment, squeezing the maximum amount of cash out of it with the help of costume-clad clowns?!?
(I’m not sure the likes of Disney are going to be too pleased to see their copyrighted-designs pan-handling on the high-street, either. The bloke in the top picture seems to have ‘twisted soul’ emblazoned on his cape, which may reveal something or other.)
- Margaret Jervis
January 29, 2016 at 12:37 pm -
Has anyone experienced the hoodie at the door with bag full of crap for sale who announces ‘I’m an ex-young offender going straight’ or words to that effect? Just wondering.
- Peter Raite
January 29, 2016 at 12:51 pm -
We find that a “NO CANVASSERS, NO SALESMEN, NO COLD CALLERS” sign does wonders.
Some friend has one that was even more specific: “WE DO NOT BUY INSURANCE, DOUBLE GLAZING, OR RELIGION AT THIS DOOR.”
- Jimbob McGinty
February 1, 2016 at 12:51 am -
Reminds me of one I remember from my days as a postie: “WE AREN’T INTERESTED IN YOUR PRODUCTS, POLITICS, OR RELIGION, BUT WISH YOU A PLEASANT JOURNEY PAST OUR DOOR”
- Jimbob McGinty
- Bandini
January 29, 2016 at 12:55 pm
- Peter Raite
- Cloudberry
January 29, 2016 at 1:20 pm -
Director James Hannon is a surveyor described on one company check site as a ‘pedlar’.
Oh-oh… same name, same location and selling tickets for a holiday competition:
http://www.banburyguardian.co.uk/news/local-news/man-had-sex-with-14-year-old-1-590478
https://companycheck.co.uk/director/907828224/MR-JAMES-HANNON/summary- Bandini
January 29, 2016 at 1:44 pm -
‘Give A Smile’ was previously known as ‘Sharing The Love Ltd.’!
- Bandini
- Fat Steve
January 29, 2016 at 1:22 pm -
@Margaret Jervis
Has anyone experienced the hoodie at the door with bag full of crap for sale who announces ‘I’m an ex-young offender going straight’ or words to that effect? Just wondering.
Yes and for some reason I always buy the crap …..there are many things I am not particularly rational about- Don Cox
January 29, 2016 at 2:38 pm -
I bought a couple of things when they first started coming round. The lads are I think being exploited.
But it really is crap, and not cheap. So I ended up shouting at one, and they haven’t appeared since. Maybe I am off the sucker list.
- Peter Raite
January 29, 2016 at 2:49 pm -
The sad things is that they probably put as much effort into earning what must be a pretty paltry amount of money, as they would doing a proper job.
- Mudplugger
January 29, 2016 at 8:29 pm -
Problem is, as any employer when faced with two equal candidates, one of whom is an ex-offender, it takes a measure of courage to employ the ‘crook’.
Timpson’s (shoe-repairs, key-cutting etc.) do some excellent work recruiting and employing ex-offenders, with considerable success (and not without risk in a cash-based business) – if others had the courage to do that, maybe fewer of them would end up door-knocking or continuing in crime.- Peter Raite
February 1, 2016 at 3:51 pm -
Expect there’s seems to be a lot of doubt whether these door-to-door merchants are really part of some “ex-offenders programme.”
- Peter Raite
- Mudplugger
- Peter Raite
- Hadleigh Fan
January 29, 2016 at 11:18 pm -
I like your honesty. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about a beggar with a dog on a London street in the height of summer, but come a chilly winter’s day and some scrawny blighter shivering and hungry, then even my hard heart softens.
- Don Cox
- Cascadian
January 29, 2016 at 5:50 pm -
Beggars……….todays super-“heroes”.
Says a lot about the world, I think.
A belated welcome back to the landlady, who if anything seems to be on finer form than previously, one hopes her health problems are in abeyance and is enjoying all the comforts of her Mr G built sanctuary from the madness.
- Bandini
January 29, 2016 at 7:17 pm -
Yoiks, the story has gone global!
http://abcnews.go.com/International/british-superman-saves-day/story?id=36592271
(The company is now described as a ‘non-profit’.)- Mudplugger
January 29, 2016 at 8:30 pm -
Is that ‘non-profit’ as in Google ?
- Mudplugger
- Margaret Jervis
January 30, 2016 at 4:23 am -
Well that’s it, I think. Well done team AR. Think we may have stumbled upon one enormous scandal hiding in plain sight.
If Mr Hannon is a sex offender (even an ex one) he should not be in charge of the vulnerable – though he may have escaped DBS barring through being a sole director of a limited company. As for the financials – look at their accounts. Peanuts. So what’s up Smiley?
- adams
January 31, 2016 at 10:24 am -
Unable to correct your Wetherspoons spelling Anna ?
- Hereward Unbowed.
January 31, 2016 at 1:45 pm -
Whether ’tis weather or wether, a spoon is just a spoon.
Gadzooks and full of foreign chuggers nowadays it seems.
Alleluia! is there no end of happy circumstance? What wonderful tales of derring do and emanating out of that good fortune so liberally spread about, where mass immigration is enforced for the benefit of us all, how lucky are we? So celebrate indeed I will and with a breakfast of bacon, warmed over tinned mushies soggy toast, cold ‘fried’ tomatoes and eggs washed liberally down by a half pint of poorly kept bitter – down at my very own local and cultural melting pot, aka Wotchamacallit’s.
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