60 Reasons : The Big Issue

 

Hello to all the members of the Eclectic Foundation. (Although considering the recent aggressive behaviour and attitude of members, I’m not sure why I am being so nice.)

The 60 Reasons Photo Competition didn’t go as well as I had hoped and due to so many disqualifications and invalid entries I have been left with an unstable mountain of leaflets. Mr Eclectic can barely move in our bedsit without getting severe paper cuts and has become a right little bleeder. He tried to find the TV remote  on Good Friday, and due to the mess, accidentally put his foot into an unemptied chamber pot, stumbled into the wall of leaflets and almost had his head severed by the myriad of paper cuts. Bandaged like a Mummy, he finally issued an ultimatum - either the leaflets went or he did. It was a tough call; my leaflets are my babies.

I asked for a few days grace and wracked my brain to come up with an effective way of using up the leaflets whilst still getting my message across. I remembered something Mikey from Radio Obscura said about my book - he described it as ‘a long piece of toilet paper without the andrex puppy’. Being a highly creative person I knew there was a seed of an idea in there somewhere and had the eureka moment as I helped Mr Eclectic off his commode:

A  giant toilet roll for people with huge arses! I mean, gargantuan bottoms are just not catered for in our weight obsessed society. For the big-bottomed fraternity the tiny pieces of ordinary toilet paper are as much use as painting the Forth Bridge with a quill. If I could glue my leaflets together and put them on a cardboard tube I would have the ideal product for those with humongous hynies! In addition, the giant toilet tissue would have my message on it and could provide hours of  educative reading pleasure; and I would call this new, exciting product  ’ Tissue with an Issue’.

Thrilled with my creativity I made a prototype and called Andrex to ask for a meeting with their design department. The sniggers down the phone didn’t fill me with hope and even when I told them I was the acclaimed author of 60 Reasons Why Watching Paint Dry Should Be An Olympic Sport they remained unimpressed. I demanded the number of their Head of Marketing  and was told he was at a meeting at Channel 4 discussing a reduction in advertising costs.

At such short notice I couldn’t organise an Andrex puppy so I roped in my neighbour, Tattooed Teresa, who already had a studded dog collar around her neck. Eagerly, we headed for Channel 4’s offices for a showdown with the  Andrex representative: The sight of Tattooed Teresa must have startled the security guard at Channel 4 because he reached the doors before we did and prevented our entry. As the tattooed one expertly cracked her knuckles, I tried to calm down the nervous guard. Negotiations continued slowly, and a bored Teresa began to aggressively flex her unnaturally bulbous biceps. Unfortunately, she accidentally knocked the roll of ‘Tissue with an Issue’ out of my hands and through the guard’s straddled legs. The giant toilet paper prototype unravelled as it made it’s way past the startled receptionists and down the  darkened corridor.

Suddenly, Teresa, taking her stand-in role as andrex puppy a little too seriously, leapt onto all fours and tried, rather optimistically, to squeeze through the horrified guard’s legs. The sound of her yelping like a dog did little to assuage his distress as she carried her unwilling passenger on her ample back, past the stupefied receptionists, following the trail of giant toilet paper to it’s ultimate destination.

As chance would have it, Mr Andrex was at that very moment entering the corridor after a successful meeting. Teresa chose that exact point in time to come to an abrupt halt; sending her petrified passenger hurtling forward like an Exocet missile. Even I winced when the security guard’s round, hard, bald head made contact with Mr Andrex’s undercarriage. I don’t think I have ever heard a grown man cry like that before.

The night in the cells proved interesting and Mr Andrex decided not to press charges, as long as a restraining order was issued. I’ve dropped the idea of giant toilet paper and have decided to set up a market stall selling the leaflets as hamster bedding, instead. It seems a far safer way of disposal, don’t you think? I mean what could possibly go wrong on a market stall…?