Secretary Chertoff? Hold On, Let Me Get That Damned Autodialer Off The Other Line . . .

Apparently nobody added Mayor Bloomberg’s supersecret hotline to the Do Not Call Registery:

Mayor Bloomberg’s secret, secure telephone for managing city catastrophes has been ringing off the hook — with telemarketers pitching insurance policies and magazine subscriptions.

Bloomberg said his “Batphone” — located in the kitchen of his Upper East Side townhouse — gets “lots of calls, including people trying to sell insurance and everything else.”

Bloomberg revealed the existence of the special phone during an appearance before a congressional committee yesterday and later answered questions about it from reporters.

He said the phone has “a secure device that encodes on either end, but it’s a regular telephone. So if you don’t sign up for the service of do-not-call-me during meal times, you get lots of calls.”

“It is not red,” he deadpanned.

The unlisted phone, installed shortly after he took office, has been solved by persistent telemarketers. “You can dial numbers at random and it will eventually get to everyone in the world,” he said.

Bloomberg said the phone has never been used in an emergency, so he knows that whenever it rings, “it’s somebody trying to sell insurance.”