Remember Silloth Homer?
One of 2 ANS cross country exercises out of Thorney Island in the mid fifties would be up the right hand side of UK and down the left. Normal Nav course sizes meant that we had a string of 6 Varsities each time. In those glorious times of NCO crews, we had four SNCO Pilots - two of them had the surname of Pratt. One of them had a radio call sign of 'Sugar Mike Two Five'.
The WRAF operator of Silloth Homer in the Cumbrian region had the most beautiful dulcet tones and one would search for her voice - and when heard; ask for a true bearing (for which you had to transmit for her to get the resultant answer).
Our position was normally in the centre of the stream and we could normally hear all of the evenining's prank. SM25 would ask for a true bearing in an ultra strong Yorkshire accent 'SILLOTH HOMER, SILLOTH HOMER THIS IS SUGAR MIKE 25 SUGAR MIKE 25 TRANSMITTING FOR TRUE BEARING ONE TWO...............and when he transmitted for the bearing; we would press transmit and go "bleh blah blurh blah" - the lass was normally unable the get the required bearing.
Cue for sniggering from all.
Then one night (we had our midstream position), we checked in with Silloth and waited for the evening entertainment. On hearing "SILLOTH HOMER THIS IS SUGAR MIKE 25 etc. The other five cockpit waited with fingers on button!
When SM25 reached the transmission for bearing we waited for the 'ONE' and pressed the buttons - Blah blah etc.
The beautiful voice came back with "SM25, this is Silloth Homer, I regret I am unable to get a good bearing on your transmission and must advise we have had the same problem with that callsign.
Back came - "Silloth Homer, Silloth Homer this is Sugar Mike 25. Now don't worry thesel' Lass, there's some c#^ts up here f*&^%g me about>"