This reference has been on my website for over fifteen years, and every now and then someone emails me to ask about just how you really do get onto the Gosport Ferry without paying.
Some law-abiding citizen even wrote to my boss at work and complained that I was setting a bad example, urging him to lay me off.
So this page is to clear it up, for those who don't get the joke.
No.
No, not really. But it used to be - and here's the very feeble twist. When I used to go to school in Gosport, in the 1980s, the Gosport Ferry only had a ticket office on the Gosport side. So you only ever paid to go one way - the return was free. It's not like that any more, but bear with me. Back then we had a 'joke' to play on gullible people - we'd say "I know how to get onto the Gosport Ferry without paying." They would beg us to tell, and we'd refuse, Eventually, we'd give in and reveal the massive secret. The answer? Drive to Portsmouth first, and then get the ferry back. Har-di-har. See, nothing illegal.
Well, we were young, it was 1984. Blimey.
Move along, now, there's nothing more to see.