From tattoo tips to background checks on online dates, the UK Foreign Office has revealed a list of odd requests from citizens abroad. Diplomats mostly deal with arrests and deaths, but silencing the odd noisy rooster can also creep on to their agenda.
The British Foreign Office published an annual report detailing
the various requests they received in 2012, including some of the
more unorthodox queries. One man in Stockholm approached the
Diplomatic Mission to ask whether it could carry out an identity
check on a woman he had met on an online dating site. Then there
was the Rome embassy, which got a request from an individual asking
for a translation of a tattoo he wanted.
Meanwhile, a desperate housewife in Tel Aviv solicited the UK’s
diplomatic services to coerce her corpulent husband into slimming
down so the couple could have children.
Enquiries as to the best place to watch the football ranked the
highest in the list of bizarre requests filed to UK consular
services around the world. Additionally, tight-fisted sports fans
pestered British Embassies the world over, looking to scrounge free
tickets to the London Olympics in 2012.
One of the most farfetched communications received by a British
Embassy last year was a request to silence a particularly loud
rooster. Sticking with the theme of animal-related woes, a man in
Cambodia who required medical attention when a monkey dislodged a
stone that fell on him called on the diplomatic mission to help him
get monetary compensation.
Upon releasing the report the UK Foreign Office did stress that it
helped over 50,000 British nationals in difficulties abroad in
2012. Most of these problems included arrests, hospitalizations and
deaths.
Consular Affairs Minister Mark Simmonds emphasized the “Foreign
Office staff help many thousands of British nationals facing
serious difficulties around the world every year.”
"We are not in a position to help people make travel
arrangements or social plans, but we do help those who face real
problems," he warned.
Simmonds told press that the Foreign Office receives over a million
inquiries every year and it is logistically impossible to answer
everyone. He added that in the coming year the institution will
seek to help those most in need, this evidently will not include
requests for Phil Collins’ telephone number and Prince Charles’
shoe size, which came up in a previous year’s report.
The UK’s diplomatic mission in Spain received so many inquiries
that it was forced to open a special contact center in the southern
city of Malaga. The center reports that over 39 per cent of the
requests that were lodged concerned lifestyle queries.