How to lose in style

Firstly, a disclaimer: I’m not normally this grotesque. Well, not always. OK, I’m quite often this grotesque but I’m normally very charming about it.

The following is quite an everyday UK office story. In fact, the longer I stay in this office, the more I realise quite how true to life The Office is. Today two things happened in the name of Children in Need. Firstly, King Tubby – the annoying halfwit who sits on my pod and twitters away incessantly – had his head shaved. He knew this was going to happen and yet he still came in with gel on his hair. Needless to say it was painful and he whinged a lot. This is King Tubby’s forte.

Secondly, there was a doughnut eating competition. Seven people entered. Within the space of five doughnuts there were three of us left: Old Punk, Rugby Player and me. Old Punk, despite his slight build, was putting them away pretty quickly. Rugby Player was by now the hotly-tipped winner. I was calmly eating my way along in third place. Everyone was getting pretty whipped up, in that peculiarly smutty British way. My boss told me very sternly “Don’t lick and don’t wipe!” and then she turned red, burst out laughing and spent the next two minutes in embarrassed hysterics.

So, as we came groaning to our doughnut climax the scores stood as follows: Rugby Player was leading with 14 doughnuts in his belly and further one in his hand; Old Punk was second with his thirteenth partially digested; I was third and slowly masticating my way through my twelfth. Old Punk was looking smug, his goatee coaked in sugar and strawberry jam. In fact, he looked too smug, and very quickly the smile was wiped off his face as he started retching. He held it in all the way to the toilets. I think vomiting is grounds for disqualification, but he did damn well considering he turned up to work still drunk.

That meant that it was just Rugby Player and me. He was looking pretty comfortable, but I think it was just psychology. I was regretting having eaten a hearty sausage and black pudding baguette for breakfast and a good four ham sandwiches for lunch. But mostly I was regretting the previous twelve doughnuts. By now I was holding my current doughnut as far away from me as possible. I didn’t want to see it, I didn’t want to smell it, and I sure as hell didn’t want to taste it. I looked at it.

It looked back at me, glistening and greasy. People were shouting at me to carry on. They were pretty frenzied. I looked at it. I stared. I stared at the crusted, sticky sugar and the leaking glistening jam. Rugy Player was sitting next to me waiting for me to catch up. I knew I couldn’t eat another three. I couldn’t even eat this one. What was I going to do?

I stared a few seconds longer. It felt like minutes. I could hear the frenzied voices of my savage workmates, faces daubed with war-paint jam and waving trays of sticky doughnuts at me. And suddenly my path became clear.

With a quick look up at my audience and a triumphant grin I took my fear, my doughy nemesis in hand and shovelled all of its sticky pallid mass into my face. Tucking the excess bits into my cheeks with my fingers I prepared myself for the final internal showdown. This was no longer about me and Rugby Player: this was about me, my gag reflex and the doughnut.

Screams erupted around me. I had delivered the ultimate horror they so eagerly desired. I chewed. I could barely keep my lips together. I chewed again, mashing down the same bits. I wriggled my tongue, trying to move the heavy mass into a better masticatory position. I chewed, struggling now. I gagged, my eyes googled, I held my chest. I chewed again. I gagged again. Rising to my feet I staggered towards the bin. What was this madman about to do?

I gagged once more, and delivering myself from the jaws of nausea, I opened wide my mouth, plucked out the entire soggy doughnut and consigned it to the bin. Turning, I shook hands with the victor knowing that while he may have eaten more, I had provided the thrill and the theatre and the debased grotesque spectacle that everyone had come to see.

If I have to work in an office much longer I will start mutilating myself with a stapler under the desk.