The phone Liam bought in Blighty was blocked by Virgin so off we strolled to a back street shop in search of solution. I was ushered into a tiny antechamber to negotiate the transaction with a seedy looking gangster type in cheap jeans surrounded by untidy piles of disassembled hand sets and spare parts. For a small consideration, the swarthy chap entered the magic sequence of numbers. I felt like I had just visited my drug dealer. The phone for a fiver now works like a dream.