The Price of No Landline? £1500

I was browsing through the television channels when I bumped across some late night quiz show. For some reason I thought to take a look; they were towards the end of a quiz where callers were invited to guess certain occupations that start with the letter 'M'.

I left it on to that channel while I returned back to my work. They were stuck at the final occupation, and callers were throwing in suggestions such as 'monk' and 'mountaineer'. All wrong. Eventually the host threw in a hint: it had to do with fungi.

My mind quickly recalled the answer (in fact I just came across the correct word a few hours earlier while reading through research material). Holy shit. I could easily win £1500!! I looked at the number, it was one of those premium 0901 numbers. No sweat, I told myself, if I got through I'd recover the cost many times over. So I entered the number into my mobile phone. It refused to make a connection. Shit! I repeated the same on my other mobile line. It still wouldn't connect. ARGH!

I looked at the VOIP phone in my room and decided to try my luck. Bloody hell it wouldn't go through! At the same time the host was giving even more clues, the answer was getting even more obvious. Damnit!

As I resigned myself to my bad luck, a caller made it through. The host asked for an answer. 'Mycobiologist'. The host gave the kind of it-was-so-obvious-i-did-not-expect-that look , while I was laughing and feeling very annoyed because I felt that he did not deserve to even get through to begin with. But the host gave him the £1500 anyway :( Money I could have gotten!

BAH.

(by the way, it was mycologist)