The latest batch of staff t-shirts at Room 101 bear the cryptic logo/slogan Matricule 6079.
Big Frank, when he was visiting a few weeks back, pointed out that 'matricule' is the French for a registration number - and so it might, for example, be a serviceman's serial number (indeed it is: through the wonders of Google I discover that it was the ID of a sergeant killed in the first months of WWI).
However, I've just realised that it is also Winston Smith's citizen number in the French edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four - so I guess that's the reference, huh? (A strangely low number - you'd think they'd need to use a lot more numbers and/or letters to give everyone a reference number! Realism, George, realism.) Why did it take me so long to work that one out?! My brain is getting old and slow.....
I only solved this riddle on the eve of their Closing Down Party - though, doubtless, it would have been plaguing me for months after the bar's demise if I hadn't cracked it.
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