On 8 Mar, 16:12, Martin Brown
wrote:

I find an answerphone on the line works wonders on cold callers.
Failing that "Just hold the line and I will go and get him"...


I just say "Putting you through now " ...

If I was a telecoms geek, I would probably know how to add a recording
saying "Thank you for holding, your call is important to us". I
suppose the ultimate would be to hack their systems, to get all the
world's cold callers auto-dialling each other.