01189998819991197253 (Dryicoran conspiracy theory)

"01189998819991197253-gate" is a Dryicoran conspiracy theory that calling the phone number 01189998819991197253, named after a joke from the popular TV series , is a quick route used by the government for emergency services when needed for official government business.

Origins
In 2006, an episode of the popular British TV comedy The IT Crowd was aired, satirising the privatisation of the British operator's number, 192, and replaced with 118 and various suffixes. 01189998819991197253 was a joke about the possibility of the confusing phone number 999 being replaced with the much simpler 01189998819991197253.

After the episode was aired in Dryicor in 2008, in 2011 Henrik Parsson suggested he had called 01189998819991197253 as a joke and got through to the emergency services. That sparked a flurry of calls to 01189998819991197253, none of which got through.

The Government answered a request for information saying that there is a fast-track Dryicoran emergency services number for government business, but "it's not nearly as obvious as 01189998819991197253".