Navy warship HMS Dreadnought into taking him and a group of his friends in blackface, including Virginia Woolf, for an official Abyssinian delegation. On occasion, Cole would wander the streets with a cow's teat poking through the open fly of his trousers; once he judged he had caused optimum outrage, he would cut off the offending protrusion with a pair of scissors. On honeymoon with his first wife in Italy, on April Fools' Day 1919, Cole dropped horse manure onto Venice's Piazza San Marco—a city with no horses that could be reached only by boat. Spending most of his later life in London, Cole executed a series of bold jokes and escapades aimed to deflate pompous figures of authority. His targets included members of parliament, city business owners, and naval officers. On one occasion, he directed a group of like-minded friends dressed as workmen as they dug a trench across Piccadilly. On another, he challenged an old schoolfriend from Eton, the newly elected Conservative Member of Parliament Oliver Locker-Lampson, to race him on a London street to the nearest corner, giving him a 10-yard head start. Cole had already slipped his gold watch into his friend's pocket, and with Locker-Lampson running ahead at full speed, Cole waited till they were passing a policeman and began to yell, "Stop thief!" Locker-Lampson was promptly arrested, and the watch was found. After savouring the moment, Cole explained that it was all a joke, and both men were told to go on their way. Unfortunately, Cole began dangerously waving his stick as though conducting an imaginary band, and both men were arrested and taken into custody. No charge was brought against Locker-Lampson, but Cole was found guilty of a breach of the peace and fined £5. According to legend, Cole once hosted a party at which the guests discovered that they all had the word "bottom" in their surnames. According to another story he bought tickets for particular seats at a theatrical performance he considered pretentious and distributed them to eight bald men whose heads, painted with a single letter, spelled out the word "B-O-L-L-O-C-K-S" (another source claims it was four men's heads making the word F-U-C-K), which was legible from the circle and boxes above. Another variation of the story is that the men's heads were bald, and when the light hit their heads, it would spell out F-U-C-K. With his mane of