Did your phone suddenly make a scary noise recently?
If you did, congratulations.
You have now been warned by the state that you are not allowed to set fire to things.
Some could argue that not starting dangerous fires is generally good advice that most of us live by anyway, but the UK has seen a lot of devastating wildfires in the dry heatwaves.
If you didn’t get an alert, I don’t know what to tell you.
Looks like you haven’t been selected to be one of the people saved when the apocalypse hits.
Oh well. I’ll miss you.
Millions of phones went off with that horrible, unmistakable emergency alarm.
The sort of noise that makes you immediately assume Vladimir Putin has finally got bored, the missiles are on their way and you have to work out how you spend your last four minutes.
Instead, it was a high-intensity memo about barbecues.
There’s the meme where people say that meeting could have been an email, well, this national security alert could have been one too.
I was on stage at the time and many people didn’t get their 7pm alert in a timely fashion.
The sound kept going off all evening.
I’d never been heckled by the Government before but I feel like I should get used to it.
Given that this happened a day after some people ended up in A&E because they looked directly at the Sun during the eclipse, it’s unsurprising to find out some responded to the national alert in a dumb way.
People started calling 999 to report their neighbours were having barbecues.
The point of the system is that the sound is dramatic so people pay attention.
But there’s dramatic, and then there’s: "I’ve just woken up every dog in Britain and many a nervous man followed through."
The difficulty with the emergency alert system is it needs to be credible.
If the alarm goes off every time the Government thinks we might be slightly too enthusiastic with a sausage, people will stop treating it as an emergency.
Since getting that message many people said they’re turning off the feature.
Well done.
The memo about BBQs now means fewer people will read the "aliens have invaded" one should it be needed.
While I am being critical I have to admit, since receiving that alert, I haven’t started any wildfires at all.
So maybe it worked.
- Steve Allen is a comedian, broadcaster and author, for more from Steve, listen to his podcast ‘Steve N Allen Almost Daily’.
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