Vintage View: 'Gossip benches' are unfortunately not written about

Kya deLongchamps says there is very little written about ‘gossip benches’ — or telephone tables — and only designer rarities are sought after in the secondhand market

PICTURE poor Vikki Carr thrown down over her teak telephone table sobbing into her go-go sequins in the hit song of 1967: ‘It’s him, it’s him, it must be him, but it’s not him, no, it’s not him — and then I die’ (Seul Sur Son Étoile/Gilbert Bécaud).

What happened to the hefty clatter of the bakelite into the cradle, the shill nerve-raking trill, the very presence of a working telephone sitting proud on its own furniture?