A man thought he had found a real bargain with his latest eBay purchase, on which he found the details of famous A-listers such as: Kevin Spacey, Tom Stoppard, Stephen Fry, Paul O’Grady, Louis Walsh, Melvyn Bragg, singer Alison Moyet, HBO Films president Colin Callendar and theatre director Michael Attenborough.
Mr. Kent Devey, living near Birmingham, was shocked to find out that the £16 ($23) Blackberry mobile phone device that he had bought from the reputable online auction service was found to contain contact details for a whole host of A-list celebrities such as Natalie Portman, Jude Law and Julie Walters, to name a few.
All he wanted was something that he could send and receive emails from, but little did he expect that he was about to get a once in a lifetime chance to be able to also send emails to popular A-list stars. Alarmed at the discovery that he was in possession of numbers that he shouldn’t be, Mr. Devey decided to do the right thing and get in touch with the original owner of the phone through eBay, in an attempt to rectify the situation.
Upon being delivered the Blackberry phone, Mr. Devey noticed that some details hadn’t quite been wiped off the phone properly and it wasn’t long until he began to recognise some of the names that were attached to the numbers and emails address on there.
Understandably, he thought it must have been some kind of joke, until he tried ringing the phone number that belonged to Julie Walters and then managed to get through to her answer phone.
The Blackberry itself is purported to have originally belonged to one Marieke Spencer, who works at Stephen Daldry Pictures as an associated producer. This was the same Stephen Daldry that brought us the smash hit film Billy Elliot (released in 2000), along with The Hours, the Virginia Woolf biopic that starred Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep.
When contacted with regards to the incident, a spokesperson for the company that had produced Billy Elliot (Working Titles Films) said that they had no idea how it had happened, but that they were incredibly grateful that Mr. Devey was returning the Blackberry and that he would receive a replacement Blackberry along with some tickets to see Billy Elliot.
