I have been to hell and back

My friends, I have been sick.

But not like you're sick. I mean sick like Chernobyl residents, lepers, bubonic plague victims and Michael Jackson.

Yes. That fucking sick.

It began as a small throaty tickle which, frankly, I ignored because I was drinking absinthe at the time. And smoking a cigar. And eating a balti.

I couldn't ignore it the next morning, however, when I woke with a noseful of luminous gloop and a voice like a 70-a-day smoker. (Which I'm not. I've never smoked. It's a sign of weakness. Unlike drinking, which is a sign of immense power and coolness. These are facts.)

So, being a management machine and shining example to my staff, I struggled into work at 10.30 and battled through as best I could, though I needed a really good think in my darkened office from about 11am until...ooh...about 4.30pm. I just asked the work experience girl to come in every half an hour and wipe the mucus from my nose, mouth, face, shoulders, arms and shoes, where it seemed to be pooling quite a lot.

The next day, matters worsened. The flu-like symptoms seemed to remain constant, but I developed a positively brutal attack of diarrhea, coupled with painful stomach cramps and explosive vomiting.

On more than one occasion, this required me to fire a stream of molten brown lava from my clackshoot while at the same time yacking like a teenager on neat scotch and raw bacon.

This wouldn't be a problem if my bathroom had been designed with this tricky manaoeuvre in mind. I've performed the 'double evacuation' many times. But my executive toilet is some way from my executive sink and my executive bath. This made things complicated. And fucking messy.

In the end, I developed a technique which I call 'poopee'. Essentially, you poo just like you'd pee - from a distance, aiming into the bowl, firing an arc of feculence through the air to its target. Given the fact that I was, more or less, pissing out of my arse, this was quite simple.

Well, after the first few goes. Sort of.

Let's just say that there was a certain amount of collateral damage. (The cleaner's face the next day was a fucking picture when she saw it! Strangely, after she'd cleaned up, she seemed to have lost any power of facial expression at all. She looked almost...I dunno...dead. You know, inside. Weird. Cheeky cow asked for extra pay, though! 'You can't have extra,' I replied. 'But you can come back tomorrow and do it again.' I'm not a monster, you know.)

Well, after that you'd think it couldn't get any worse.

But it did.

I mean, I shat the bed pretty much constantly for the whole next day, and the day after that I went to the doctor and puked in her mouth.

Not on purpose! God, no! She was examining my throat and flicked my sick button with the wooden thing she was holding my tongue down with. The rest was down to mother nature, or God, or whoever designed the sick button. It wasn't my fucking fault, that's for sure.

I'd been really battling to keep a hold of my lunch (nothing too rich - just a couple of Pot Noodles and a box of scotch eggs and a microwaveable burger and a packet of cheese balls) so I was definitely due a bit of a barf.

Well, I let it go just as she was opening her mouth to speak. It's actually quite striking how much she swallowed. And - get this for irony! - she was just about to say 'Try not to throw up again - it's bad for your throat'! (She told me this when I phoned her in hospital later. She was recovering after having her stomach pumped, and a small operation to remove a scotch egg from her esophagus. She seemed stoical, if psychologically damaged.)

After that, things got really bad. But I won't go into it because I'm not one of those people who goes on and on about their illness in graphic and disturbing detail.

Anyway, now I feel as chipper and tremendous as ever, so I'm going into the agency to demand a room full of people come up with solutions to problems I don't have.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!