Comedy trolling

Trolling humourless companies, media organisations and government departments has been a proven ground of comedy for many years.

One of the first people to regularly create humour out of correspondence with po-faced press officers and customer relation departments was satirist William Donaldson. The Henry Root Letters, first published in 1980, saw Donaldson writing to government ministries and product manufacturers as the seemingly naive Henry Root.

Targets included Margaret Thatcher, the BBC accounts department, The Sun newspaper and the Ministry of Defence. Donaldson's trick of often enclosing a £1 'donation' (which most recipients couldn't accept and thus had to return) ensured replies.

Funny correspondence included his discussions with a posh private school about taking on his son, a 15 year-old who is not "shaping up"; enquiring to the Conservative Board of Finance about how much it would be to buy a knighthood; and applying to become the new Editor of The New Statesman.

Henry Root's letters, existing in an age before email, also exposed the first signs of corporate entities sending back generic formatted responses designed to look personal. In one of his more crude and blunt letters, Root wrote to BBC TV programme That's Life to call presenter Esther Rantzen "a fat idiot". Three days later he received a 'personal' reply from Rantzen thanking him for his letter and the "tremendous moral boost" feedback such as that gave to her and the production team.

Moving into the internet age, Robert Popper became perhaps the next Henry Root. The sitcom writer has, for a number of years, been bothering people at the end of telephones and email accounts in the guise of his oddball alter ego Robin Cooper. The best of the early Cooper pranks have been published in The Timewaster Letters and its sequels.

More recently though, Popper has continued pranking but recording his attempts as audio and video for people on the internet to enjoy. Many can be found via his website

Here is a recent call in which he phoned Theresa May's office to pass on his congratulations on her becoming the next Prime Minister and, in the process, imploring her to look after pigeons.

Meanwhile Kayvan Novak really made the most out of prank phone calls. Fonejacker reigned on television for a number of years, with Novak bothering members of the public using characters such as wheeler dealer geezer Terry Tibbs; Mr Doovde, a man who struggles with acronyms; and African scamster George Agdgdgwngo. The call in which George tries to get someone to hand over their personal details because there is a pigeon "stuck" in their bank account is surely one of the funniest ideas for a prank call ever.

Joe Lycett is the latest to release a book of pranks. You may have seen him on TV recounting the story of how he got the council to back down over a parking fine. That, and more tales, feature in Parsnips, Buttered, his recently published collection. In this humorous book he tries to out-weird internet trolls; contest a so-called 'ripe avocado'; attempt to take down multi-national companies and even defeat ISIS.

The internet is where you can find and watch most comedy trolling occurring nowdays though. As highlighted by 888 Casino, a chap calling himself Peter Ness has been logging on to online poker rooms with the username 'P Ness' and recording what happens when the live dealers welcome him to the table.

Let's end this article with one of our favourite trolling videos. Witness as 'Sheephead' phones up the BangBabes TV channel to get some late night analysis of how England are performing in the Ashes cricket test...