It was a blessing no-one was using the toilet when it blew up. Well, let me re-arrange that. Let me be more precise. Father Tom was giving a blessing to the toilet when the manifestation decided to really manifest, and how!
- The office loos had been possessed now for close on four months. At first there were just these “accidents”. You know the sort of thing. You've had a really bad night, eight pints and an Indian or a Doner kebab, the pains hit you, you dive in there, slam the door and the world falls out of your bottom! And THEN you realise there's no paper…
- Or you're the smoothest, sexiest, tallest, high-heel-ist blonde in the place, PA to the MD. Once you actually went out with a Manchester United Reserve player. You have done the business (even the gorgeous ones do) and you've left… and stuck to the back of both stilettos is that tell-tale square of tissue-paper… but it gets worse, this paper isn't even clean.
- Or you're the mayoress, visiting. A smart, young (well, almost) very presentable 41 (was a model you know, yes, cardigans for People's Friend) and you go through to powder your nose (even Lady Mayoresses do) and you spend the rest of the day with your skirt tucked into your tights and nobody told you until you got home. It was like that for six-an-a-half hours and you haven't decided whether to resign, kill yourself or take up a post as Yak Inspector in Gyangze, Tibet.
- You may do all three.
- The problem with these incidents was that the mortified victims didn't exactly want to talk about their lavatorial disasters, their bathroom blunders, their Loo Waterloos. So it was quite a while before anyone put two and two together and began to think the unthinkable.
- There was a ghost in the latrine!
- What actually finally made the doo-doo hit the fan was - no, not even in this story did doo-doo actually contact a fan - the laxative problem.
- Y'see one of the offices in Gordon's was a market research outfit and they were in discussions with this Serbo-Latvian chemist who had invented a near-instant laxative…
- Spachek Sichek had explained, this was powerful stuff. But the only way the marketing squad was going to appreciate what they had on their hands (so to speak) was to try it out.
- “Zo, I am telting you, vair careful. You must be actually sitting down, in zee, uh, place, before you eat the choco-pil, an you eat just little bit.”
- Simon Monterfore was the VP Marketing. A tall bloke, sickeningly good looking, jet black hair, body to die for, blah-blah. He was one of those so-confident people he never really listened.
- He took a block of Sichek's super pooper stuff, cut it up and gave a small amount to everyone on the staff. They had listened, they had listened, and just sat there, coughing politely, as you do when your imagination is running full-bore and you're wondering who will be the first to blink.
- Then Simon put his hand to his mouth. Well, he was only fifteen yards from the executive bathroom…
- “No!” cried Sichek, but Simon just grinned a superior grin and popped the choc.
- Those who were in the room that day told me what happened. They said Simon hadn't even finished swallowing when the pains hit him. He leapt from his two thousand dollar leather chair, dived through the door of the executive toilet, ripped off his trousers, sat down, and exploded. That was when he realised he was sitting on the CEO's lap!
- There is mortification and mortification, but this was the ultimate. Not only was Simon the Perfect sat there, the toilet door smashed off its hinges and twenty people staring, but he was sitting on the CEO's lap, he was sitting on the CEO's lap.
- Well, what do you say in this situation
- Simon was totally stricken, white, ashamed, humiliated and sitting on the CEO's lap after having just taken the fastest biggest dump in history.
- “Oh, Sir,” he began. “I am so, so, sooooooo sorry. You see we had a chap called Sichek from Latvia, a research chemist, and - ”
- But the CEO, was calm, just sitting there.
- He was smiling.
- Smiling.
- Simon Monterfore tried to explain again. Latvia. Laxative, etc. Don't eat the pill until you're actually sitting down. Only fifteen yards. Overtaken, pain immense, amazing effect. Didn't realise there was anyone sitting there, and…”
- “Simon, Simon,” the CEO crooned. “It's OK, it's OK.”
- “It's OK?”
- “Sure, Simon,” he said. “You forgot to take off your underpants.”
- Well, now that the troubles had involved Jenny Leggs, involved the Mayoress, the VP marketing, and now the CEO, things clicked. A meeting was called and the anecdotal evidence for problems with the lavatory was overwhelmingly strong. (No pun intended.) I was asked to head up the Toilet Investigatory Task Force.
- We started with a questionnaire (a little tricky), considered closed-circuit TV (even trickier) and eventually we plumped for a networked reporting system (anonymous) and collated the data on a spreadsheet. (Why is it, by the way, that once you start these things, just about everything you say can be taken the wrong way?)
- Anyway, in no time at all, the evidence was conclusive. It seemed ridiculous in this modern age but our facilities were haunted.
- We called in the experts - a shit job, but someone's gotta do it - and only when they had all failed in a big way did we turn to the church, and eventually, Father Tom.
- Which brings me back to the exploding bog.
- Father Tom emerged looking like one of those cartoon characters covered in soot after the bomb has gone off, with white rings round his eyes. Only this wasn't soot.
- I stood at the other end of the room and spoke by megaphone.
- “IS IT FIXED, THEN?'
- “To be sure.”
“WHAT WAS IT?”
- “Oh, it was possession, most certainly. Of a most fiendish nature.”
- “WE KNOW THAT. FATHER TOM!”
- “Fiendish, fiendish, toilet possession, most unusual.”
- “IS IT GONE?”
- “Er, well…” (He went all Irish on me, the dumb kind.)
- “Well, yes it's gone…”
- “GREAT!”
- “Mutter.”
- “WHAT WAS THAT, FATHER TOM?”
- “I've managed to move it from the toilets.”
- Just then Simon Montfore came in with two cappuccinos from the sexy new coffee machine in reception. He came quickly to my end of the room and opened a window.
- “MOVED IT?”
- “Yes, it's on the ground floor.” He was very Irish now. Looking down, a bit sheepish.
- Simon had his plastic cup to his lips.
- “I t'ink it's in - ” and then he looked up, saw Simon, grinning Simon, almost back-to-normal Simon. Glug-Glug. “The coffee machine.”
- If only the window hadn't been open.
