Toilet humour

Okay, toilet humour is probably the lowest form of humour, besides sarcasm, puns, and possibly SABC3's "Font". But this is a true story loosely linking a toilet "situation" and television and me, so dammit, I'm going to tell it!

Being a health-conscious individual, I am given to eating much fruit and fibre, but it wasn't always so.

One week in August, a few years ago, I noticed that the loo rolls weren't going down as quickly as usual. I checked that Tryphina wasn't on leave. She wasn't. Made sure the wife and kids were still living and eliminating. They were.

So I had to come to the conclusion that the problem lay with me when I calculated that it was four days since I last had the opportunity to delete SMSes in my inbox, something I only do in quiet solitude. My inbox (on my Nokia) was full! It was proof enough! I was constipated!

This entire epiphany dawned on me on the very day that I was to meet a new and potentially big client at a lovely little designer bistro in pretentious Parkhurst...

Now, not having suffered from constipation before, I simply did what a guy would do and went out and bought a box of laxatives and took double the dose to sort out the problem quickly so that I could free up some space before a total system failure could occur (I'm talking about my phone). This was about 9 in the morning and I thought I could have my inbox cleared by lunchtime in time for my meeting.

I was so wrong.

By 12.30pm absolutely nothing had happened! I read the leaflet and to my horror discovered that you are supposed to take the stuff at night, just before bed, and that you would then wake up to a wonderful liberation first thing the next morning.

I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that the makers of this human drain cleaner obviously figured in an 8-hour turnaround time so you could plan your morning routine of housework, exercise and breakfast without fear of staining the furniture.

I was soon to discover that formulations of laxatives are based on a rather inexact science. And I totally ignored the fact that I had doubled the dose and therefore potentially halved the working time of the stuff.

I blithely set off for my meeting without as much as a peep from my midriff.

The client was kind and affable, but as with any first meeting, you are never quite at ease and are desperate not to make a bad impression. We sat outside and ordered lunch and it was all going so well... until about 15 minutes in. First a stirring, then a gurgling, and then cramps that made me wince. That was still bearable but then the pressure down below started to build and the "knyping" began. Eventually I was clenching so hard that my eyes started to water. Oddly, a morbid fear of coughing also came upon me.

The potential client was unaware of the brewing storm and continued waxing lyrical about the project but then, he stopped suddenly. Seeing the intense look on my face and my moist, slitted eyes, he enquired if I was okay.

Instead of coming clean about my precarious condition, I simply told him how fascinated I was by the project and that I found his passion for it very moving. (What the hell was wrong with me!? Who would buy that!? He must have thought I was a total loon at best or a complete sycophant at worst!)

Suddenly the pressure increased tenfold and I simply had to escape!

I excused myself from the table and slipped into the tiny little restaurant. It was a converted house and the loo (there was only one) opened (unbelievably) directly into the (quiet) eating area, PLUS it had a huge gap at the top and the bottom of the door. There was just NO WAY! I could not do that to a restaurant.

To cut a long and agonising story short, my sphincter could not contract any tighter so I excused myself from the meeting and sped off to my office in Randburg, considering all the way whether it would really be that hard to clean leather seats.

Anyway, I made it back, albeit with tears streaming down my face and my knees locked together as if fused at the patellas.

And yes, the client did eventually work with me. It seems he could read the passion I had for his project on my face.