Met Police reveal most annoying 999 calls

KFC running out of chicken and the persistent whistling of a bus driver were among the more than 21,000 time-wasting emergency calls taken by the Metropolitan Police this year.

The force recorded 21,733 so-called hoax calls out of the two million it received between 1 January and 30 November.

Among the other callers “was somebody complaining that breakfast had been served too slowly in a London pub”, says the BBC.

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In one call the police released on Twitter, a woman can be heard complaining about a whistling bus driver, saying people should be "respectful".

She told the call handler: “Everybody's tired, what if everybody starts whistling or singing on the bus?

“I don't really like this because I think they must be respectful.”

Other callers “complained about a lack of female taxi drivers, the doors of a broken-down bus being shut, and an argument with another driver about right of way”, reports ITV News.

The list of calls was released by Scotland Yard to highlight the issue of wasting time.

“During the time that our call handlers are dealing with these time-wasting calls, a member of the public could be in real danger or have built up the confidence to call with an important piece of information that could take a dangerous person off the streets,” Chief Superintendent David Jackson told Metro.

“Imagine if one of your friends or loved ones were in need of the police as quickly as possible and it turned out we could not help because we were having to deal with one of these hoax calls,” he added.