Mayor Rob Ford isn’t kidding when he says he calls everyone back.

I left a message on Ford’s phone before Christmas trying to get an interview with him for a year-end story I was working on.

Over a January weekend (a Saturday night around 7 p.m. just before city council’s budget vote) he returned the call.

The message gave me some insight into how the mayor of Canada’s largest city handles his callbacks.

“It’s Rob Ford mayor of Toronto just returning your call, 7:15 on Saturday night,” he said.

He went on to leave his office phone number and encouraged me to give him a call back.

I don’t think the mayor realized he was returning a media call. I got the feeling he was just running down a list of phone numbers to call back.

Checking with his office staff, I’m told that’s exactly what he does – just keeps dialing down a long list of phone numbers, no names, no specified issues.

I remember during the election campaign when Ford promised he’d still return every call he gets. People laughed and few believed he’d be able to do it but here he is more than two years later still returning calls.

You can argue whether or not this is a good use of time for the mayor of Canada’s largest city and it isn’t clear whether the calls actually lead to problems being solved and residents being satisfied. But it still remains one of the more interesting quirks in a quirky mayoralty.