Luckily I am still getting some paid work, so I shouldn't starve any time yet, not with all the weight I've put on in the last month eating Haribos and not exercising (though made it down to the gym this afternoon for first time since September).
This evening I was involved in the recording of two episodes of Charlie Brooker's new radio show "So Wrong It's Right" (which will be on Radio 4 in the new year I believe). That'll keep me Haribos for a couple of days. And it was a fun night of telling stories about the worst things we'd done, or the worst things in the world or coming up with ideas for the worst new Olympic event or advertising slogan (they didn't get to the round where we had been asked to come up with our worst DJ names, for which I'd come up with DJ Dinner Jacket). It's really just an excuse for a chat with funny people, with Charlie being his usual sarcastic, but somehow rather charmingly sweet self. He was even funnier in the pub afterwards when we were discussing the programme about the execution of Gary Glitter and whether Glitter deserved to be the first person to be hanged in half a century. They not only needed a celebrity I guess, but had they chosen a really horribly evil crime - like those of Ian Huntley - then perhaps the show would have been unwatchably bleak - Glitter is a comedy paedophile, at least in the mind of the media. You probably wouldn't feel the same if he'd raped you (if he actually did have sex with kids - though according to the trial on Channel 4 he did, so I think we can take that as a fact now). I think that some of the stuff we talked about was too far over the line even for AIOTM, but it made me laugh so much that my stomach hurt. I am not sure the show itself was quite as funny as that, but I think it will be worth a listen.
I had to come up with the worst excuse I'd ever come up with and had struggled all day to think of anything. I'd considered telling the story of how I had broken a caravan window in a masturbation based accident (if you buy the forthcoming Headmaster's Son DVD you'll be able to hear about that in the extras) and the impossible and useless reason I gave up to cover up my teenage onanistic crimes, but the producer's face went quite white at the prospect of trying to get that on Radio 4 at 6.30. Then I wondered if I could use the yoghurt story from AIOTM 5 (by the way you can read all the rehearsal scripts for the show
in the downloads section if you want to see what we make up or write at the last minute), but then suddenly recalled the tale (and I don't know if I've told you this one before) of when I was at primary school and desperately needed a poo, but was too mortified to actually visit the toilets for a number 2 (there was an unspoken rule that pooing in school toilets made me a weirdo - or maybe I just wasn't convinced of the cleanliness) and eventually just decided to go in my pants (I was 6 years old, so it's embarrassing, but only moderately so). It was a brave and foolhardy decision, especially as we were in the middle of a lesson and I was wearing rather small shorts. And it was a fairly hefty poo. We were involved in some activity, moving around the classroom to make it worse, and of course some of my classmates noticed the smell. And spotting that the window of the room was open I came up with the brilliantly terrible excuse that there was "a naughty dog outside" who must have done a poo. And somehow this excuse was enough for the 6 year olds who were with me. Even though the smell was clearly too strong to have travelled all the way up from the street and through the window and to the middle of the room. It was also fun to think that the dog was aware that what he was doing was "naughty", like he was trying to disrupt our day with his stinking dog faeces. I think many people might have questioned the argument, but I was getting away with it. The smell got worse, my little pants were bulging with poo. "Oh, it's the naughty dog again," I suggested. Yes, he was so evil he had come back to do a second prodigiously stinking shit. My playmates shook their heads, not at my lie, but at the canine's antics.
But unfortunately my brilliant ruse came crashing down on my head, when a sliver of poo slipped out of my pants and out of my shorts and on to the floor. I remember some kids standing round it, pointing at it, as if they didn't know what it could possibly be. Then the teacher became aware of the commotion and said, "Who did this?" I think I knew the naughty dog thing wouldn't work now, partly because my teacher was an adult and partly because it would have had to have been an audaciously naughty dog who managed to somehow make his way unseen into the school, then through the closed classroom door, then have done a shit without anyone noticing and then made his escape, sniggering, no doubt, like some kind of a Mutley.
I didn't keep up the subterfuge, but signalled my guilt by running out of the classroom and to the, now I think about it, really disgusting outside loos at Emmanuel Infants School in Loughborough. Those loos had probably been there since the forties at least. I hope they have been replaced by now.
All I remember is trying to deal with my problem on my own and staying shut in the cubicle (It was close to the end of the day and I think the teacher probably told me to stay there, rather than have to face the embarrassment of returning to the classroom I had soiled and the friends I had befuddled with my fecal lies. I remember my mum turning up to pick me up. I don't remember what she said, though I have a vague memory that her and the teacher were very kind and understanding and non-accusatory. I think if I did this at work now (say during the recording of a Radio 4 panel show) my colleagues would be less kind. But mums and teachers have to deal with these things. And we should thank them for that, even if nearly four decades have passed by.
Hopefully that wasn't too rude a story for Radio 4. It certainly might get a retelling in AIOTM. And I think the naughty dog might turn out to be a useful scape goat (if that's not a confusing phrase to use at this juncture) for many of life's maladies. Someone has farted in the lift? A naughty dog must have done it and got out at the last stop. You leave an unpleasant smell in the toilet at a dinner party? A naughty dog came in, while I was washing my hands after doing a wee, got up on the seat and did a shit in the toilet. And flushed it. Naughty dog. There seems to be semen all over my underwear drawer! A naughty dog must have come in, pulled over a chair to the chest, used its mouth to open the drawer and then rubbed up against the pants for some reason- though it's hard to see why human underwear would be sexually exciting to a dog. But that's how naughty he is.
Naughty dog.
