Close encounters of the turd kind

The Evening Standard story told a sorry tale of a shit student

Shit happens.

Last night, I went to the National Film Theatre to hear producer/director Roger Corman talk about his movie career. On the train on the way there, I read in the London Evening Standard a half-page story which started:

“A drama student has told how his life was ruined by being unable to leave the lavatory for up to seven hours a day due to a fear of soiling himself.”

23-year-old James said of the lavatory: “Since I was five, I have had a really difficult relationship with it, which sounds ridiculous. But I hate it. It’s like a monkey on my back.”

I arrived early for the NFT event and sat outside on the South Bank of the River Thames for a while. Such is the immorality caused by having a daily blog that I have started to eavesdrop on random conversations.

Two men were chatting next to me, both middle-aged.

“It hasn’t come out yet,” one was saying.

“How do you look for it?” the other asked.

“With my fingers,” said the first man.

“Ughh,” said the second man.

“Yes, ughh,” said the first man.

I knew the first man’s pain.

Wikipedia explains dental crown details

The crown on one of his teeth had come off and he had swallowed it.

This has happened to me twice.

The first time, I thought: I am not going to plough through my shit for the next couple of days to find a small crown and then get it put back in my mouth by the dentist.

So I got a new crown made. It was expensive.

It was VERY expensive.

A few years later, the same thing happened.

I am a Scot brought up among Jews.

I thought: It is very expensive. I AM going to plough through my shit for the next couple of days.

And I did. But it was more complicated than it had at first seemed.

For one thing, you have to intercept the turds as they emerge – and preferably on a non-porous, fairly rigid material. You also have to ensure only one turd emerges and there is then a gap before the next one emerges so that, in that gap, you can lay the first turd collected on the non-porous material on a flat surface.

Dental crowns are surprisingly small in relation to the size of an average turd so could easily be inside one without being visible. I found the best way to sift the turd or – let’s be frank here – turds – was to use a fork, then to mash the excreted material until I was certain there was no small white object covered in brown material lurking amidst the other squidgy brown material.

Thus the requirement for a non-porous, fairly rigid material on which to lay the turds as they emerged.

The crown took four days to emerge.

It was not a pleasant time.

It cost me a fork. I threw it away.

I could have disinfected it, but I could not face the potential future flashbacks when eating.

Is comedy more or less important than sewage management?

Years ago, I was on a BBC shorthand writing course and one of the other guys on the course was a BBC News Trainee and Cambridge University graduate called Peter Bazalgette; there was something interesting about his eyes – a creative inquisitiveness – that made me think he had immense talent.

But he never got anywhere in BBC News.

He ended up as a researcher on Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life! and, from there, he became producer on one of the most unimaginatively-titled BBC TV shows ever: Food and Drink. 

He made a big success of that and in doing so, it is often said, he created the new concept of celebrity chefs. He then started his own company, making Changing Rooms, Ground Force and  Ready, Steady Cook amongst others.

His company ended up as part of Endemol and it is Bazalgette who is credited with making the Dutch TV format Big Brother such a big success in the UK and worldwide. By 2007, he was on Endemol’s global board with a salary of £4.6 million.

Last year, I saw another Cambridge University graduate perform at the Edinburgh Fringe – Dec Munro – and he had a creative inquisitiveness in his eyes similar to Peter Bazalgette’s.

Dec currently runs the monthly Test Tube Comedy show at the Canal Cafe Theatre in London’s Little Venice. I saw the show for the first time last night and he is an exceptionally good compere.

I always think it is more difficult to be a good compere than a good comedian and, very often, I have seen good comedians make bad comperes.

Ivor Dembina and Janey Godley – both, perhaps not coincidentally, storytellers rather than pure gag-based comics – are that rare thing: good comedians AND good comperes.

The late Malcolm Hardee – with the best will in the world – was not a particularly good comedian in a normal stand-up spot on a comedy bill – he really did survive for about 25 years on around six gags – but he was a brilliant, vastly underestimated compere as well as a club owner and spotter of raw talent and, as was often said, his greatest comedy act was actually his life off-stage.

Dec Munro has strong on-stage charisma and, judging by last night’s show, a good eye for putting together a bill, combining the more adventurous parts of the circuit – George Ryegold and Doctor Brown last night – with new acts who are very likely to have a big future – the very impressive musical act Rachel Parris

Of course, if they read this, I could have just destroyed Dec Munro’s and Rachel Parris’ careers. There is nothing worse than reading good mentions of your performance and believing them.

And I don’t know where either will end up.

In three years, Rachel Parris has the ability to be a major TV comedy performer. And Dec Munro should be a TV producer. But broadcast television is yesterday’s medium even with Simon Cowell’s successful mega shows. And no-one knows what the replacement is.

Perhaps Dec Munro and Rachel Parris will ride the crest of an upcoming wave; perhaps they will fade away. Showbiz is a dangerously random business. But, then, so is everything in life.

Peter Bazalgette is the great-great-grandson of sewer pioneer Sir Joseph Bazalgette who created central London’s sewer network which was instrumental in stopping the city’s cholera epidemics.

Sometimes handling shit in a better way can be more important than being a successful showbiz performer or producer.

You can create your own punchline to that.

A weird cock tale for Valentine’s Day (beware explicit material)

A couple of days ago, an ex-girlfriend asked me:

“Have you ever tasted your own sperm?”

“Errr…” I replied. “… No.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Errr… I”m not really interested.”

“That’s weird,” she said.

“Is it?”

“If I have a baby,” she persisted, “I would want to drink some of my own breast milk just to know what it tastes like.”

“It’s not quite the same,” I suggested.

“Yes it is,” she insisted. “Have you never wondered what it tastes like?”

“Breast milk, yes. My own sperm, no. Slightly salty, I think… I’ve read that somewhere. I’ve never asked anyone. It might seem indelicate. In Beyond The Valley of The Dolls, I think someone says something like Prepare to taste the black sperm of my vengeance!. I think it’s a threat.”

“You’ve expected women to put it in their mouth. Have you no interest in knowing what it tastes like?”

“That might have been a line in it, too,” I said.

“Be serious,” she said.

“Errr… No. I’ve got no interest at all in sucking cock. Nothing I can do about that. It’s not in the genes. I can’t do anything about it. I have no interest in eating my own shit either. People have fed me shit in the past – I’ve worked for the BBC. But I don’t want to eat real shit. Call me conservative.”

“Eating your own shit is completely different,” she said. “It’s medically unhealthy.”

“Well, then,” I said, “drinking your own urine. That’s not unhealthy. People say it’s positively healthy. People do drink their own urine. It’s just not for me. Sarah Miles the actress does it. And some bloke called Desai who was the Prime Minister of India. I think Mahatma Gandhi may have drunk his own urine. But I’ve got no interest in drinking my own urine or my own sperm. Trust me on this one.”

“But you expect other people to do it,” she said.

“I’ve never pissed in anyone’s mouth in my life,” I said, “It’s not my thing. Some people get off on it, though. Maybe we should start bottling pee. There’s obviously a proven demand for it: actresses and politicians. And then there’s probably a big un-tapped market in some parts of Soho. There might be a big demand for sperm drinks in the gay community. I think I’ve read sperm is full of goodness. We could have discovered a gap in the market here. Bottled sperm and bottled pee. We could sell them both in health shops as a food supplement.”

She stopped and thought about this for a moment.

We are still in discussions.

In the current recession, Prime Minister David Cameron says he wants to encourage enterprise and small businesses as part of his Big Society. We think we may be able to get some government seed money. Or we might try to submit it as an idea on Dragons’ Den.

All we have to do is think of a catchy brand name… and iced lollies are not out of the question.

No shit.