A DUSTY DRAWING ROOM IN A GENTLEMAN'S CLUB. TWO DISTINGUISHED MEN IN THEIR 60'S ARE SITTING IN A PAIR OF COMFORTABLE ARMCHAIRS IN FRONT OF A RAGING FIRE. EACH HOLD HEAVY BRANDY GLASSES.
Mr JAMES: I miss having my after diner 'Fat Cuban'.
Mr SCOTT: Ahhh, a 'Romeo and Juliet' for me. What was wrong with the odd cigar?
Mr JAMES: It's the nanny state gone mad.
A WAITER APPROACHES.
WAITER: Excuse me Doctors, would either of you like anything from the bar before it closes?
Mr SCOTT: For the sake of exposition man! We are both consultants and should be referred to as Mr, not doctor.
Mr JAMES: He knows, he is just winding you up. Two more Brandy's please Tommy.
WAITER: Certainly,... Mr and Mr.
THE WAITER TURNS AND WALKS OFF
Mr SCOTT: Damned cheek! (BEAT) Tommy? Is he the appendix?
Mr JAMES: Yes.
Mr SCOTT: The one you accidentally left the Fitbit your wife gave you in?
Mr JAMES: I assure it was no accident. She monitors my fitbit performance avidly. She has never been so impressed with my fitness since Tommy started doing all my exercising for me.
Mr SCOTT: I could always write you a prescription for a cigar?
Mr JAMES: One daily, to be smoked in front of a roaring fire after a fine meal. Why not? After all they write prescriptions for booze for alcohol addicts.
Mr SCOTT: I wrote a prescription for Williams.
Mr JAMES: Did it work?
Mr SCOTT: They barred him.
Mr JAMES: Barred him?
Mr SCOTT: Yes, mind you it wasn't a cigar in the drawing room, it was a prostitute in the foyer.
Mr JAMES: Fair play. He's a character alright, Mr Williams.
Mr SCOTT: No, it was Doctor Williams, not Mr Williams.
Mr JAMES: Doctor Williams? The dirty bastard.
THE WAITER RETURNS AND PUTS TWO BRANDIES ON THE TABLE. THEN LEAVES.
Mr SCOTT: Looks like there is something in your glass.
Mr JAMES PICKS UP THE GLASS AND EXAMINES IT
Mr JAMES: A fitbit.
Mr SCOTT: Yours?
Mr JAMES: I had noticed Tommy was doing a lot of exercise in my bed room whilst i was at work. I guess my wife noticed it too.
Mr SCOTT: But how...
Mr JAMES: My wife is an excellent fister.
(PAUSE)
Mr SCOTT: Where were we?
Mr JAMES: You were just about to tell me about the strangest case you ever had.
Mr SCOTT: Usual rules? Best story wins, loser pays for dinner?
Mr JAMES: Sounds good.
Mr SCOTT: Yes, the strange case of the Government's scientist. He had apparently been working on quantum anomalies on some hush hush program at Porton Down.
Mr JAMES: Porton Down, good start.
Mr SCOTT: He was brought into A&E complaining that he had accidentally ingested some sort of toxic fluid possibly from a crashed alien space craft.
Mr JAMES: What happened?
Mr SCOTT: That night when the fluid reached his rectum it opened some sort of time portal. He started emptying his bowels and just didn't stop. Every motion he was destined to excrete during his entire life, past present and future poured out of his anal time tunnel. We found him the next day in his room, an emaciated husk under a six foot pile of steaming crap.
Mr JAMES: A remarkable story. But not a unique one I am afraid.
Mr SCOTT: What?
Mr JAMES: A few years back a young man presented himself at my clinic with a story of how he had been accosted in the street by some wizened old crone, who demanded money from him, in return for being told his fortune. He informed her he had no interest in such nonsense and pushed his way past her.
(PAUSE)
Mr SCOTT: Well? What happened.
Mr JAMES: The Crone shouted after him, issuing some kind of fearful curse. He described how he thought nothing of it at the time but over the intervening hours he had convinced himself all was not right with his large colon...
Mr SCOTT: Don't tell me, you told him he had a crack in his arse? Come on James you are just about to copy my bloody story.
Mr JAMES: With one important difference! I agreed to examine him to put his mind at rest, then right there in front of my eyes, the young man's anus formed itself into a temporal vortex.
Mr SCOTT: Foul! I cry foul!
Mr JAMES: Only instead of the commonplace excrement excreting variety this was an as yet undiscovered rectal reversing 'brown hole'. Something only Stephen Hawking had predicted.
Mr SCOTT: Oh, nice touch.
Mr JAMES: Helplessly, I watched, as over the next thirty minutes every turd the Man had ever passed magically returned and forced entry back up from whence it had initially emerged. Like a shoal of smelly brown salmon swimming upstream returning home to their source...
Mr SCOTT: Enough you win dammit. What happened to the chap?
Mr JAMES: When he was totally full of shit?
Mr SCOTT: Yes, did he die?
Mr JAMES: No, he changed his name to Piers Morgan and went on the telly.