A telephone offer you can’t refuse: The...

A telephone offer you can’t refuse: The mailman brought Patrick Goldstein of Brentwood a coupon booklet that contained the usual two-for-one dinner tickets, some carwash discounts and an offer from an “ex-Mafia kingpin . . . on how not to be a target for criminals.”

The ex-kingpin is now the operator of a 900-number telephone business. (Is such a decline in status another sign of the recession?)

His ad says the $1.95-per-minute service includes “inside tips on: rape, mugging, robbery, carjacking, mall crime, home security, warning signs of a drug user, holiday shopping.”

We think the price would be worth it if only to learn how to avoid holiday shopping.

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Someone--break these chains!A Times editor was among the recent recipients of a chain letter requesting that he send his business card to a terminally ill boy named Craig Sherford in care of the Atlanta-based Children’s Make-a-Wish Foundation. The letter explained that Craig wants “to be included in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most business cards ever collected by one person.”

It’s a simple enough request--requiring no money--and seemingly for a good cause. The only problem is, the boy’s name is Craig Shergold. And the Carshalton, England, youth has been healthy since 1991, when he had a brain tumor removed.

Craig did make the Guinness book, which says he “collected a record 33 million get well cards by May, 1991, when his mother pleaded for no more.”

But the chain can’t be broken. In the years since, the request has somehow changed from get well to business cards. And his last name appears as Shergold, Sherford and a few other variations. Sometimes his first name is Greg.

A spokesman for the Make-a-Wish Foundation, which now turns over the letters to recyclers, told a reporter earlier this year: “The point we’d like to get across is that Craig has had his wish. And it’s his wish now--and others’--that people stop sending cards to him.”

Obviously, word hasn’t reached Southern California.

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Ooh L.A. L.A.: British director Ronald Neame describes an unusual conversation he had in L.A. half a century (and one feminist movement) ago in the just-published “ANGLAFILE--A Guide to the Best of British in Los Angeles.”

Neame, who had just arrived, was asked by his new employer--20th Century Fox--if he needed a secretary.

“I said it would be helpful,” Neame recalled. “ ‘Would you like a blonde or a brunette?’ I was asked. Jokingly I replied, ‘I like redheads.’ Believe it or not, the next morning, sitting in my outer office was a gorgeous girl with flaming red hair. What’s more, she had a car and I didn’t. She said she would drive me to any studio I wished to visit, and was completely at my disposal. Those were the days!”

miscelLAny L.A.’s first Flirting Convention will strut into the Red Lion Hotel in Glendale on Dec. 30. Slyly grinning attendees will compete for the titles of Mr. and Ms. Southern California Flirt, with the winners eligible to try for the U.S. titles at the National Singles Convention in Las Vegas in January. Entrance fee for the Glendale round is $15 apiece. Even flirting has a price tag these days.