True Tales of Bastardness involving Poo (and related smells)

Should I ever have cause to write an autobiography, I would expect the opening chapter to be all about poo.

It seems that my childhood (and parts of my adult life) can be measured out in poo anecdotes. In most cases, the pleasure gleaned from these episodes centres upon the impact of the faecal matter on other people. Few things have caused me more mirth than the sheer nausea, violent retching or offended horror experienced by the victims of these acts of bastardness.

And so I would like to document for your delight (or disgust) my top ten turd-related true tales, in reverse order, because it’s apt to begin at the bottom:

10. Shit-stained pants behind the sink
My mother insisted that my brother and I wear plain white y-fronts while we were growing up. This was a shockingly shortsighted decision on her part. Our response was to leave skid marks along the gusset which would have required a chisel and blow-torch to remove once she’d discovered them dried-out and tucked behind the bathroom sink, where we erroneously believed she’d never find them. Perhaps if she had taught us to wipe our bottoms properly, she would not have fallen victim to this practice.

9. A Human Poo behind the Garages
Whilst playing out in a narrow alleyway of bushes behind the garages near our house, I lazily decided to spare myself the walk home (about 100 metres) and so dropped my pants to have a shit there and then. Foliage in the vicinity was not the most robust, but what the hell, I could always tuck that day’s pants behind the bathroom sink.
Our neighbour, who’d been playing out with us (yes, there was an audience for this base act) grassed me up to his mum, who then told my mum. When accused, I naturally denied the crime; but our neighbour’s mum had been round behind the garages to verify the accusation. I suggested that the evidence she had discovered was probably a dog’s poo, but she claimed that she knew the difference between dog and human poo.
What was she? A fucking shit expert? My mum must have thought so, because on her testimony I was banged to rights.

8. Stinkbomb in a Phone Box
Straying slightly away from poo, this was my favourite prank played on total strangers. There was a phone box outside our house, so we took the number, waited next to it until someone happened to be walking up the hill towards us and then smashed a stink bomb inside. Then we’d run back inside the house, ring the number and look mischievously out of the window at the poor passer-by stepping inside to answer the phone, being subjected to that most foul of manufactured smells.

7. Shat in My Shorts
At first glance this sounds like a run-of-the-mill occurrence. However, the shorts in question cost me £20 in 1990 from a Rolling Stones concert at Wembley stadium. Bermuda shorts (all the rage in 1990) emblazoned with the Stone’s Tongue design. And the shitter who shat in my shorts was my brother.
Self-conscious about his narrow waist, he would wear several layers beneath his jeans and on this occasion he chose to make my very special expensive Stones Bermuda shorts the bottom layer. He was in a club in Manor House called The Catacombs, dancing to The Doors, when he felt a fart brewing. As it turned out, there was a lot more to it and he shit himself. In my fucking shorts. He disposed of them in the gents (down the loo rather than behind any sink) and returned to the dancefloor.
Bastard.

6. Exploding Poo
Back in the 1970’s, before dog owners were ordered to scoop up their pets’ plops, you really couldn’t go anywhere as a kid without stepping in shit. If we spotted one in advance, we’d often lance the canine waste matter with a stick and throw it at each other.
Come the 1980’s, there was less opportunity for such bastardness in the UK – but no less in France. On an exchange trip, me and my mate Wayne bought the obligatory pack of bangers and had the idea of sliding one inside a dog’s turd. We lit it and ran. The effect was all that we’d hoped for, but for the fact that some of the fall-out hit Wayne. Ironically, he was the fastest sprinter in our year at school, but even he couldn’t outrun exploding dog shit.

5. Fartspray: the brainchild of a bastard
Joke shops were well stocked with Fartspray back in the 80’s. Not that it smelt of fart. It was far worse than that. My brother was used to me farting on his head (sometimes bare-arsed for maximum effect) but he and our cousin were totally unprepared for being locked in our coal-shed and having me liberally spraying it through the gap above the door. Sadly, I had to let them out quickly, because they were close to taking the door off its hinges in their desperation to escape.

4. Floater in the Bath
I’m sure I was still made to share a bath with my younger brother until I was at least 6 or maybe 7 or 8 at best. Perhaps the trigger for ending this slightly unsavoury practice was the growing frequency of one or other of us to either piss in the bath, or on a few occasions, to squeeze a nugget of poo out and see if it could float towards the other before he had a chance to spot it and jump out. Mum must have got tired of the resultant screaming on these joint bath nights and let us have our own baths from then on.

3. Enacting the Chinese Proverb
Do you remember, as a kid, someone saying: Old Chinese proverb say, He who goes to bed with itchy bum, wakes up with smelly finger? Well that gave me an idea. (I’ll apologise to the reader now, because as we hit the top 3, the anecdotes become increasingly impossible to stomach.) I would deliberately itch my bum until my finger was so potently smelly that I couldn’t bear to move it within a foot of my nose. Then I’d grab my little brother in a headlock with one arm and with my free hand – the one with the offensive arse-residue on its index finger – I’d cover his mouth and make sure that the finger was wedged against his nostrils.
I put my hands up to this – it was abuse. People who criticise the Americans for Guantanamo Bay, really need to question whether I should be on trial for Human Rights violations before the US government is.

2. Nutella
I’m not getting paid for the advertisement, but I would like to thank Nutella for this number 2 prank. Chocolate spread, out of context (i.e. not in a jar or on bread) looks exactly like poo. Exploiting this fact, I played this prank on someone – I can’t even remember who – and I would encourage everyone to try it, because the effect was worth recording and sending to You’ve Been Framed.
I smeared chocolate spread quite thickly onto a scrunched up bundle of toilet paper and placed it on the floor next to the loo. Then I called the victim in and accused that person of being responsible for the shitty tissue missing the pan. As they were denying involvement in this apparent act of carelessness, I picked up the tissue and shoved it all into my mouth.
The look of horror and immediate retching of my victim meant that I had to swiftly unplug my mouth, because I was laughing so hard I nearly choked on it.
(You know what, now that I think about it, for this prank I was an adult and the victim may have been my own son. Is that bad?)

1. Why the fuck did I do this?
My favourite poo-related prank of all time tops the list for two reasons. Firstly, the impact of this action on the victim was the most extreme; and secondly, it was never intended as a prank and it was a completely illogical thing for me to do.
Again, thinking about the house in which I did this, I was at least 6 years old, but couldn’t have been much older, because it was so incomprehensively dumb.
I went into the bathroom to use the toilet and I decided that for a change I would poo in the bath instead. FOR A CHANGE? I recall my decision clearly. I wanted variety in my life. I asked myself, why should we always have to poo in the toilet? Let’s try something different.
So, I pooed in the bath. Not like I did when my brother was in the bath with me, when the poo would float a while on the surface of the water and you could offer a defence to your mum that it was an accident. NO! This was a shit in a dry bath. I had the foresight to dispose of the subsequent tissue in the actual toilet, but then I was confronted by the inevitable and horrifying realisation that you can’t flush a bath.
There’s something about the water in a toilet that minimises the smell of poo. This I concluded as I reaped the reward of witnessing a turd hit the dry surface of the bath. I also have a theory that much of the smell is contained within a poo and is released when it breaks. Well this one certainly had its surface crack on impact.
I knew what to do next, though. I shouted to my little brother to come and see. Innocently he responded to my call and walked straight in. Hit by the stark image of that misplaced poo and the wave of stink emanating from its pores, my brother immediately turned back into the hall and vomited all over the floor.
My mum, called into action to deal with both the poo and the vomit, plus her eldest son’s sheer brainlessness, was far too furious with me to allow me to enjoy the moment straight away. But I’ve dined out on the memory for almost 35 years since and for that reason as well this is my number one number two tale.