Sandra, if my wife and I were intimately involved in bed and the phone rang (and yes, it's happened on a number of occasions!) absolutely the last thing on either of our minds would be to stop what we were doing to have a social chit-chat with our friends and family, or discuss our elctricity and gas supply with a pushy telesales-numpty 'Humanities' or 'Social-Studies' graduate who could only get a crap job in a call-centre. It could ring itself stupid for all we'd care.

The couple in the novel must have been having a particularly unsatisfying shag! :-)