It was while he was waiting for an underground train on the northbound Piccadilly Line platform at Leicester Square towards midnight on an autumnal Saturday that Tony became aware that, as he put it, his “rectum warning light” was flashing. He had been out carousing with some friends and had, as was absolutely his wont, eaten and drunk far too much. Far, far too much. For once he had not had to “honk his guts up” (generally an integral milestone in the progress of any evening’s drinking for Tony, to be recounted in garish and gruesome detail to all and sundry during the following morning) but now his body was beginning to protest.

 

Despite grotesque behaviour that might often have testified to the contrary, Tony retained a certain squeamishness, and although a quite startling quantity of beer had gone south, and although the “rectum warning light” was now flashing with an ominous urgency, he remained sufficiently alert to the realities of the world to be reviled by the thought of the likely state of any public conveniences that might still be available in that vicinity. This was 1982 and while Leicester Square had not yet become home to the host of ambassadors of the capital’s seamy underclass that frequent it today, there was already a sort of irremediable grubbiness about the locality that might well make one to think twice before embarking on such a personal and delicate operation there.

 

And yet, contrary to prevailing precedent Tony allowed himself to be swayed by the recollection of former mishaps when he had, unwisely, overestimated his capacity to clench his buttocks over the lengthy sojourn back to Hampden Lane, Tottenham, a journey which did, after all, require him to change trains at Finsbury Park, and then take a lengthy walk through dubious streets after he had alighted at Tottenham Hale

 

While struggling to resolve this quandary it suddenly occurred to Tony that he had a more acceptable solution almost literally within his grasp. At that stage of his colourful career Tony was based at St Martin’s Tax District which resided in Higham House in the close hinterland of Centrepoint, and, for reasons that might mystify the more percipient or perspicacious reader, he had been entrusted with (or rather, it might perhaps be more accurate to say, he had contrived to acquire) a set of keys to the building. Salvation seemed, therefore, to be to hand. All he had to do was return to street level, walk (or perhaps, given the rapidly intensifying urgency of that flashing mental light, jog) the few hundred metres to the office building, let himself in and he could “lob out” in comfort, maybe taking the opportunity to luxuriate in some decent farts as well; after all, the walls of the gents’ toilets on the second floor of Higham House were clad in shiny tiles which offered a particularly satisfying resonance, and it was always so frustrating having to try to suppress one’s more stentorian emissions during the course of a normal working day.

 

Thus resolved he turned, not exactly with a spring in his step but certainly with greater confidence, and started to make his way up towards street level from the bowels (oops, best not to dwell on that word just now) of the tube station. Owing to the crowds thronging the area, many of whom, no doubt, felt similarly afflicted, this took Tony longer than he initially anticipated, and the warning light’s former flicker had now become more insistent than ever. He fought his way along the crowded pavements until, breathless with the unexpected exertion, he stood before Higham House. It was by no means one of London’s architectural wonders, and few people could ever have been so happy, or so relieved, to find themselves standing before such an unprepossessing door.

 

I’m sure that at some time most (if not all) of us have found ourselves rehearsing the drunkard’s routine of checking frantically for something that you know you must have with you, but which seems to be evading your every effort. You check every pocket several times over, becoming increasingly fraught as you can find no trace of the desired object (wallet, keys, mobile phone…) until, just as terminal desperation is about to descend you come across what you were looking for, invariably perfectly evident in the first pocket that you tried. Indeed, I remember once going through that rigmarole having stumbled home from the pub rather worse for wear and being unable to find my keys. Not wanting to rouse the household at some ungodly hour I slept in my car, despite almost sub-zero temperatures, Upon waking the next morning and struggling to drag my stiffened limbs out of the car I put my had into my jacket pocket where, larger than ever and totally unmissable, were the very keys for which I had hunted so unsuccessfully for what had seemed like hours the previous evening.

 

Tony experienced just such a scare on that night, and must have gone through every pocket of his suit, and even delved deeply into the lining of his anorak before he managed to retrieve the fat bunch of keys. Even then he was not home and dry, and he had to struggle through the second phase of examining each key two or three times before eventually identifying the ones that he needed. These two operations probably only took a couple of minutes but those were precious minutes, and Tony realised that he was starting to live on borrowed time.

 

Even after identifying the appropriate key his travails were not yet over. He inserted the big brass Chubb into the hole but try as he might he could not force it to turn. For a fleeting moment he wondered if the locks had been changed. After all, he had obtained his key several months ago, and, as he had acquired it through less than official channels it was quite feasible that the locks might have been changed with his knowledge. He almost gave up at that point and let fate take its unpleasant course but resolved to give just one more try. Perhaps he merely held the key at a slightly different angle, or perhaps those gods who look after drunks and enable them always to get back home, however circuitous the route that they might follow, were watching over him. He felt rather than heard the tumblers click and suddenly the door swung inwards, and he lurched into the foyer.

 

Tony had probably passed through that foyer several hundred times during his stint in St Martins Tax District, but he had never really paid much attention to it, and could hitherto only have described it in the most general terms. Now, though, it felt like a sanctuary from all conceivable ills, and he looked upon it almost with awe. His reverie, though, was cut short – the flashing of that mental light was now more demanding of attention than he had ever experienced before. Appalled, two facts became equally clear to him. Firstly he suddenly realised that he did not know anything about the layout of the Ground Floor; secondly, there was quite clearly no way in which he would have time to take either the lift or the stairs to the first floor. Indeed, he now acknowledged that immediate action was called for, and in a frenzy fuelled by the last feeble dregs of adrenaline he almost tore his trousers and underwear off. No suitable receptacle offered itself up so, almost in ecstasies of relief, he simply squatted over the parquet-tiled floor and yielded to the surging of a faecal tide, the like of which he had seldom experienced before. As a boy he had read a comic annual which featured a story called “And Jo Talked By The Gallon” in which, as a consequence of a series of vicissitudes of fate too numerous to list, an underground river was diverted from its natural course to emerge through the side of a mountain in which, Mount Rushmore like, the faces of tribal elders, preserved in legend because of their god-like feats, had been carved. The accompanying illustration showed a huge torrent emerging from the mouth of one of these Rushmore-like carvings, and flowing down the hillside to irrigate the dusty, drought-ridden land. Here, in Higham House, Tony’s arse took on the role of Jo, and talked by the kilo, liberally bedecking the parquet floors of the foyer of Higham House. No doubt the delivery of this tide of relief probably only lasted for a few seconds but to Tony it seemed as though the moment lasted for minutes. Relieved but exhausted he finally flopped down on one of the few unpolluted areas of floor to rest for a few moments before grappling with the now significant issue of what to do next.

 

Picking up his bags and his kecks (or trousers and underwear for those less conversant with the working of Greyfriars slang) he now staggered off in search of the nearest bathroom with a view to cleaning himself up. However, he did take a quick look at his handiwork (so to speak) and while the issue of how it might most appropriately be cleared up was one on which, as yet, he had nothing to offer, he did feel a surge of insane pride. Could just one arse have delivered quite that much ordure, unaided? There was faecal debris everywhere! Throughout the whole Billy Bunter canon Frank Richards never attempted to describe a public foyer bestrewn with turds, but if he had been faced with this one he would doubtless have suggested that it was “of the turd, turdy!”

 

After withdrawing to conduct some hasty ablutions in the gents on the third floor Tony returned, gingerly to the foyer. Perhaps, he thought, it might not look quite so bad now that he had regained some much-needed equilibrium. The trouble was that he had no benchmark – never having liberally beshat a foyer before he had no reasonable point of comparison. Unfortunately, as he emerged from the lift it became all too evident that things now looked, and also smelt, far worse than he had feared. The prospect facing him now required something a bit more engaging than merely papering over the crack (so to speak!). His earlier pride at the voluminous yield had now vanished entirely, replaced by bewilderment over how he might rectify the situation.

 

It was at this point that Tony was inspired. In the years that followed Tony would recount this tale with pride, but he could never identify where the brilliant, and overwhelmingly simple, idea originated. The thought that came to him with such a blinding flash was that he needn’t do anything at all. He would simply remove any other evidence that he had been in the foyer and depart, leaving the door pushed to rather than properly closed. Granted, this meant that he was leaving a public building bereft of any security, but if it gave him the perfect escape mechanism then so what? As has already been mentioned, the office was not situated in a particularly salubrious area, and it was certainly not unknown for local vagrants to doss down overnight in the doorway. It suddenly occurred to Tony that if he slipped away silently into the night, the assumption on Monday morning would be that someone had omitted to check that the door was shut, and that at some stage of the weekend a gentleman of the road had taken the opportunity to grab some kip in the relative shelter of the reception area. By the time Tony arrived in the office on Monday morning (never very early and seldom before ten o’clock), the shock and horror would be over and cleansing operations would probably already be under way, if not actually completed.

 

With these jolly thoughts Tony went about his way, and enjoyed a largely uneventful journey back to Tottenham. Indeed, he only had to stop to urinate in a doorway twice on the whole walk back from Tottenham Hale, and his Sunday was passed in innocent bliss.

 

On the following Monday when he presented himself at work Tony had almost forgotten the whole episode. It had faded from his mind so completely that he could barely recall whether it had actually happened or whether he had fleetingly dreamt it all.

 

On the basis of what I have already told of Tony’s unique career path through the Inland Revenue some readers might be amazed, perhaps even horrified, to hear that he had ever been a line manager, responsible for overseeing staff’s work and attending to their personal development needs. However, that was indeed the case and at the time of which I write he was Team Leader on the PAYE section at St Martin’s Tax District, responsible for a squad of five Tax Officers and two clerical assistants. On Monday morning he duly arrived, as usual, at about 10.05 and passed through the foyer, giving a cheery wave to the attendant seated behind the reception desk. There were certainly no signs of anything untoward, though he couldn’t be entirely sure whether or not some vestigial odour remained, barely detectable on the threshold of his sensory range. Still, the receptionist smiled back at him and waved him through, just as usual, so he began to feel that he was in the clear.

 

No sooner had he arrived at his desk on Monday morning than Frances, an ambitious Tax Officer recently transferred in to St Martins from Camden Town District, came up to him and starting recounting the bizarre experiences which had befallen her on Sunday.

 

“Hi Tony, how are you? You know Dave, Sean and I were all working overtime yesterday?” Tony now recalled that he had known this, but that he had entirely overlooked it during Saturday night’s activities. “It was horrible! When we arrived there was… well, pooh… everywhere. All over the place and it really stank. It was gross. Bill and Frank had to clear it all up.”

 

At this Tony’s spirits soared – Bill and Frank were Tax Officers (Higher Grade), like Tony himself, but that was all they had in common; there was absolutely no love lost between them and him.

 

Frances went on, “The door wasn’t shut properly and Bill thought that some tramps must have slept there. I said it looked like two or three of them must have… well … gone … if you know what I mean. Frank said he thought it looked like an elephant had been taken short there. Ugh! It quite put me off my Danish pastry!”

 

Glowing inwardly Tony nodded his head in disbelief. “Crikey! That’s awful. The things some people do! Like an elephant, you say? Oh dear. Poor Frank and Bill! Still, on the positive side I guess that neither of them will be biting their nails for a while. Now, I’ll just get some coffee and we can prepare for the Team Meeting…”

 

The Artful Dodger had got away with it again, and his joy and pride knew no bounds!