Probably the most useful phone number in England

0800 654 321

This phone number will, when dialled from any phone in the country, connect you to your nearest taxi firm.

This means that wherever you are - even if you yourelf have no idea where you are - you can get home again.

Especially useful when drunk/stoned, provided you can retrieve the phrase Freephone 6-5-4-3-2-1 from your drink/drug addled memory.

My reson for noding this is that no-one seems to know about it and I'm forever answering people who shout out "Does anyone know a cab number" and telling them to phone this number.

I should be on commission or something.

n.b. I have never known the number to work from a mobile phone, either because the system cannot work out where you are, or because there is no agreement in place with the service providers.

Unless you're an expatriate, in which case the most useful number might be

08707 940000

, which lets you make a phone call to any of several popular foreign countries, without any secret codes or PIN numbers or cards, for the price of a call at the national rate. Works from cable and mobile phones as well...but doesn't work on weekends.

www.just-dial.com and, no, I don't work for them.

PS to the gazelle: when I try the universal taxi number from all over the Black Country it tells me I have been banned from using the number. Maybe the whole Dudley Metropolitan Borough has been banned but I doubt it...I will keep carrying taxi bizcards in my wallet for now.