wind-up

Hello Friends, I have a doubt about "wind-up" in this text:

"We didn’t really have a name to start with – we couldn’t think of one – so we didn’t bother while we were rehearsing and stuff. Until we actually found a good name and then we just come up with a name and it was like, yeah, that’s the one."
"We were playing at the Cart and Horses* and the pot man who’s in the picture over there came over to us and said, you‘ve got a phone call and we thought it was a WIND-UP but it was some other band sayng they had the name so, you know,we just told them to piss off and that was it but we was worried I gotta be honest so straight away we went out and registered the name."

* an English pub

What is a "wind-up"?? Joke?? In this text, he thought was a wind-up:

A) A phone call to the band? (The band really had a phone call)??

or he thought the "wind-up" was

B) The content of the phone call? (The existence of another band with the same name)??

B) makes more sense to me.

What gives. I take the trouble to answer your query in your original post...

Good question.
Look again at what he says:
you‘ve got a phone call and we thought it was a wind-up BUT it was some other band saying they had the name
If telling them that there was a phone call was just a 'wind-up(=trying to provoke/get a response from another person in a playful way) then he couldn't now be telling us about what the caller said: "some other band saying they had the (same) name (that we had decided to call our band)."
It was what the caller said that, at first, he thought was the wind-up.

Now a re-post - which is dismissive of a person's attempt to respond in the original thread. If that didn't satisfy, say so in the original thread, rather than...


Makes one reluctant to take the time with some people, from now on.

There are multiple threads about the Iron Maiden phone and it can all get a bit messy and confusing; could you try to keep to a single thread for one topic to avoid multiple answers? Thanks.

You are asking what 'to wind-up' means?

You are probably more familiar with the idea of winding up a ball of string or the spring on a clockwork device. However in this context it is a slang term for a prank. This type of prank is carried out by providing a false story, hoping that it will be believed. Maybe you wouldn't believe a caller if they said they were the President of Brazil, but there are lesser claims you may believe. These stories can go on for days, always adding ever more incredible claims. Some people are gullible and believe everything that is said to them. The pranksters are laughing at the person for believing them.