Million-to-One Shot, Doc. Million-to-One

The clergyman, in his 50s, told nurses he had been hanging curtains when he fell backwards on to his kitchen table.

He happened to be nude at the time of the mishap, said the vicar, who insisted he had not been playing a sex game.…

Speaking of the vicar, A & E nurse Trudi Watson, of Sheffield's Northern General Hospital, said: “He explained to me, quite sincerely, he had been hanging curtains naked in the kitchen when he fell backwards on to the kitchen table and on to a potato.

“But it's not for me to question his story.”


No, questioning stories and mocking the storytellers, that's my job.

Now, vicar—can I call you “Dude?”—I don't know where to begin. Questions surround your fell on to a potato story like a distressed sphincter. (Take that Dashiell Hammett.) Sadly, none of the possible answers to them leave you shining in a good light.

Seriously, what answer to Why were you hanging curtains in the nude? helps you. What awkward silence following Do you expect us to believe you “fell” (read as air quotes) onto an un-lubricated potato and it slipped into your un-prepped bunghole without injury to yourself or the delicate tissues that compose that tender orifice? could dispel the disbelief and invoke the holiness that once clenched tightly around you like the ass cheeks of a diarrhetic who fears he's about to shart? (Okay, you win this time, Hammett, but this is far from over.) You would have been better off saying “I was just conducting an experiment to see if potatoes could blossom in dark and lube-y places. Now, we'll never know.”

Better yet, how about “Sometimes, a vicar gets lonely.” Trust me: say that, and you will get no follow-up questions.

Really, people, honesty is the best policy—except in any shenanigans that implicate me. Then, the policy is to lie like O.J. at a murder trial. (Point, Loman.)

** Above, is a picture of two vicars without potatoes in their bums. That's so rare nowadays that I thought it important enough to share. Of course, the day is young.