Proceedings began with a displeased Rake dialling a premium rate number, at which point he was welcomed by the voice of an automated clerk and asked to state his name clearly after the tone.  Court records show that the defendant was heard to say, ‘Sir Michael Rake,’ which was immediately followed by an electronic beep, and then, after a pause, the words, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.  Sir Michael . . .’, before the clerk interjected and told the defendant, ‘We are sorry, we did not catch that.  Please try again or you will be placed on remand at Brixton Prison.’

After several laboured, phonetic enunciations of his name, an increasingly irritated Rake was informed by the clerk of the charges laid against him, before being given the options, ‘To plead guilty, press 1.  To plead not guilty, press 2′.  At discovering there was no option to query the prosecution’s charges, Sir Michael Rake looked around the courtroom in disbelief, before angrily asking the empty chamber, ‘Can’t I just speak to a human being?’  After a lengthy pause, the clerk responded, ‘You don’t appear to have selected an option.  To plead guilty, press 1.  To plead not guilty, press 2.’

Confronted only with silence for several minutes, a now visibly infuriated Sir Michael Rake was seen to pace the courtroom muttering profanities indecipherable to the automated clerk, before finally striking the phone’s numberpad with the handset in a fit of anger.  ‘You’ve chosen to plead guilty,’ the clerk announced, at which point an emotionally exhausted Rake broke down and delivered a detailed confession of his company’s crimes, all of which was recorded to help the court improve its service to future customers.

‘We are thrilled that the first fully-automated, unmanned trial has been such a success,’ said His Honour Justice Collins afterwards.  ‘And we’re delighted that it was the chairman of BT who was the first to test it out.  I’m sure he’ll be enormously grateful that our new efficient system has brought this painful ordeal to such a swift conclusion.’  Justice Collins sentenced Sir Michael Rake to 200 hours community service in the court service’s new Mumbai call centre.

‘Everyone already has had to suffer the mild humiliation of revealing their embarrassing middle names and date of birth to everybody within earshot while phoning their bank from work,’ said a representative from the Financial Services Association. ‘But increased identity fraud means we now need personal details that friends wouldn’t usually reveal to friends or work colleagues.’

Several banks are already piloting the new security measures with the result that one London office was witness to a caller giving the responses ‘Spoons’; ‘plump-rumps-dot-com’ and ‘glory hole in Rio, but she turned out to be a bloke.’ ‘It certainly livened up a dull day in the House of Commons’ said one Westminster secretary.

However there is concern that with an increasing number of call centres bringing in automated systems, callers will be required to speak loudly and or indeed shout their sexual habits down the line. ‘We had a bloke in the office trying to book some cinema tickets’ said another office worker. ‘And all we could hear was our office manager shouting ‘Doggy! No, doggy! Randy Grannies!’ and ‘Stranglewank!’ He was only buying tickets for ‘Toy Story 3’.

In this particular case it transpires that the institution was not automated at all, it was just the call centre workers’ finding a way to entertain themselves. ‘It’s one of the few perks of a very boring job,’ said an employee.