Advertising in Call Sign
Many of the ads seen in Call Sign originate with a phone call to me from a driver. They usually tell me that someone or other is prepared to offer Dial-a-Cab drivers a special deal in return for a special deal re an advert. I have no problem with that principle and in fact my policy re ads in the mag is that the drivers come first. If someone is prepared to offer DaC subscribers something that will help them, then I am delighted to "negotiate."
   However, so far as Call Sign is concerned, although the drivers (and of course the Brunswick House staff) will always come first, their families also read the mag and I must think of them as well. Hence my recent decision to turn down an advert from a reputable club that specialise in table dancing following a driver passing on my number to the club.
   They were happy to offer a perfectly legal incentive to any driver taking guests to their establishment. You may have seen their ads in other trade papers showing a scantily clad lady on a table. It certainly wouldn't have caused any young readers to become perverts, but I felt that it wasn't right for Call Sign.
   Several months back I published a photo of a DaC telephonist who was leaving our employ and having a party in the pub next door to Brunswick  House. I published a photo of the young lady cuddling a male stripper. I had no problem doing that because I considered it to be a fun pic. Advertising table dancers, in my view, is different and Call Sign will not be taking them while I'm Editor...

Al Fresco and Skin Cancer
One of my closest friends is Al Fresco. He has one the best-known faces in the trade following his time as Editor of Steering Wheel (it was he who changed its name to The Cab Driver), London Taxi Times and Mountview News. He now writes for TAXI with one of the most entertaining columns in the trade press.
   Of similar age, Al and I go back many years having both gone to Davenant Foundation Grammar School and living in Mile End before moving out to Green Badge Valley. We both followed Spurs all over the country - although his devotion has outlived mine!  We both did the Knowledge and then ended up editing trade magazines.

   But there is one thing that Al enjoys that I don't... sunshine. Al is happy mowing the grass for hours with his shirt off, to feel the warming rays of the sun on his body. On holiday, he loves nothing more that relaxing by a sun-drenched pool with a book in his hands...
After discovering an old mole on his back that had suddenly changed in texture, Al had a piece of skin removed from it that he described as resembling a "piece of raw chicken nugget!" That test was diagnosed as showing a melanoma - a tumour consisting of dark, pigmented cells and also known as skin cancer. The hope now was that it would show up in tests as being benign. Then Al and his wife Carole were given the devastating news that the cancer was malignant and that he would need immediate surgery to try and remove any of the cancer still remaining and to check whether it had spread to any of the lymph glands.
   Following the op, I sat next to his bed at Barts and asked him how he felt because he looked no different than he always did. He even told a joke - albeit a lousy one! The only problem was that the results would take almost three weeks to come back - for Al and Carole, undoubtedly the longest three weeks of their lives.  As the days went by, Linda and I could feel the mental anguish our close friends were going through.  Al, as I would have expected, was very philosophical about the whole thing and only after the results came back saying that the op had been a success, did he admit that he had lied and that he had really been making extra visits to the nearest loo...!
   To say we are pleased that Al has the all clear would be a gross understatement, but there is a warning here that we should take note of. There is no doubt that the rays of the sun are causing more damage to our skin than they did many years ago. It may feel the same but obviously isn't.
   Cancer is still the biggest curse of modern day society, but skin cancer caused by excessive

sun is unnecessary. 
In June 2001, Call Sign published an article by Terri Hammond (N78) where she told a similar story to Al.
   Her parents lived abroad and she enjoyed nothing more than to visit them and just relax in the sun. She told Call Sign that she just wanted a reasonable tan and that it was almost an insult when people said to her: 
"Not very brown, are you...?" Terri always used protective lotions, but didn't take much notice of factor numbers. As she told this magazine: "suntan lotion was suntan lotion!"
   Following immediate surgery, Terri, like Al, was lucky - it had been caught in time. Not everyone is that lucky. Skin cancer usually spreads outwards first, but then can start spreading inwards and that's where the problems can become magnified.
   Many people have moles, but by the time you are an adult they have probably stopped growing, but you rarely get new ones. If you do, then a visit to the doctor is imperative. It could be nothing, but you should still go. Doctors will tell you that skin grows back just as Al's "piece of chicken" will grow back, but don't just leave things and hope they go away.
   And please, if you go out into the sun without a top, use a high factor cream. I wouldn't want anyone to go through what Al and Terri have...

LTDA and Pedicabs
My sympathies go out to the LTDA after losing the recent court case against those awful pedicabs. How any judge can consider these bikes to be stage-coaches is beyond my comprehension. That night, following their court victory, Soho was filled to overflowing with these awful bikes - roads, pavements, anywhere there was a spare centimetre of space, there was a pedicab pushing his horn! I have no problem with them acting purely for tourists with fixed price rides going around Trafalgar  Square, but they want to be taxis - and they aren't!
    I do hope that the LTDA will consider an appeal because I, for one, would love to ram it down the pedicab's throats. I also have no doubt that even though the fight was lost, the LTDA were right to bring the case. On any appeal, I believe that my monthly LTDA subscription will have never been better spent...

Alan Fisher
Editor