Comedy of the Week - Chloe Petts' Toilet Humour

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

In this episode, Chloe begins her journey exploring her own relationship with the toilet. From the revelations in primary school, to the best friends you make in the night club toilet, right up to what her experience is like in present day.To help Chloe on this historical journey of the loo, she is joined by a new travel companion, the Ghost of Sir Thomas Crapper - who also bears quite a resemblance to comedian, Ed Gamble.Written and Performed by Chloe Petts Additional material from Adam Drake The Ghost of Sir Thomas Crapper performed by Ed Gamble Produced by Daisy Knight Sound Designer - David Thomas Editor - Peregrine Andrews Executive Producers - Jon Thoday, Richard Allen Turner and Rob Aslett An Avalon production for BBC Radio 4

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts Hello, my name is Chloe pets and I love toilets not in a creepy way like when kids are really into Frank Sinatra Just in a way that I find them interesting, like dads and lawnmowers. I love toilet humour. It's a shame, but I don't think I'll ever write anything as funny as a well-timed fart. And I've never felt more at home than when I'm rushing through that number one or two in a posh toilet, because I can see they've got molten brown moisturiser. And they haven't even chained it down, suckers. That's going straight in my rucksack.

Some people think that my happy place is the football or verbally abusing a man on the bus because he manspread a bit too wide. But no, I relish the quiet time away from the outside world that the loo affords me. I use it to silently rehearse anecdotes that I'll inevitably tell on a future appearance of Graham Norton.

I've appeared on the Graham Norton show on Toilet Seat so many times up and down this great nation that I do have a concern that if I ever do go on the show, I'll have a Pamphylons dog response and wee myself on the red sofa. And as much as I love her, I will be throwing Miriam Margulies under the bus. I love all of the idiosyncrasies of the loo.

Like when the flusher is a sensor and you lean back on it and it flushes whilst your bum's still out. So you get like an accidental B-Day wash. Or when the lights are on a timer and you've been a mobile for so long that they turn off so you have to sit alone in the dark pondering your impending mortality. For me, the bog has always been a locale of fun,

but there seems to be a lot of cultural conversations around them at the moment on the subject of who gets to go where. Toilets are top of the political agenda, so in this series I'm taking a look at the history of the Lews to see how we relate to each other within them. But first, allow me to show you my credentials as your Lew historian by giving a potted personal history of my life in the pot, so you can get to know your delightful host,

who some have described as a regional treasure. history of my life in the pot. So you can get to know your delightful host who some have described as a regional treasure... a little better. Let's get this out the way. Visually I'm more masculine of centre. Indeed Ross Kempongangs has cited me as a role model. If you take a glance at me you see a six-foot figure in men's clothes that absolutely reeks of Lynx Africa and ketchup. And because of this I often get mistaken for a man. When I walk into a chicken shop I get called boss man. Plumbers talk to me like I know what a U-bend is and why it shouldn't currently be spurting water onto the bathroom floor.

And ladies often get a little confused when they see me in the women's loo and will look between me and the stick figure sign on the door like they're doing a really bad spot the difference. But these confused women are no surprise to me whatsoever. As far back as primary school, the toilet was a binary space. At my primary school, we had a classroom of 30 kids and between us, we had two toilets, both alike in dignity, which were exactly the same

and intended for anyone to use. But we arbitrarily decided that one was a boys toilet and the other was a girls. At this time we didn't really know about the notion of the unisex or the gender-neutral toilet that we all know about now. Yeah everybody knows if you want to get to the gender neutral toilet, all you do is run head first at the wall between the ladies and the gents like it's platform nine and three quarters. Ironic that J.K. Rowling is the one that came up with the technology for the gender neutral toilet.

Anyway, one day at my school, there was a big queue for the girls toilet and no queue for the boys, which is bog standard. And I do not wish for you to pardon the pun. Sorry, there was a big queue for the girls, none for the boys, but on this particular day, a girl called Tara goes walking past the girls' queue and heads for the boys' loo. We were all like, what a day. This is going to bring some much needed jeopardy to our otherwise bland suburban lives. We were thinking this is unprecedented and we didn't even know we knew that word yet

because there hadn't been a global pandemic. But we were going to allow it to play out, but this girl called Joanne stopped Tara. Now Joanne would describe herself probably as the most popular girl in the year. I'd describe her as, and I don't say this about many seven year olds, a vindictive and evil little girl who I've wished ill on every day since. Joanne stopped Tara and was like, um, if you go in the boys, your hair will fall out. Like something quite drastic, you know? Like a short back and sides.

And then you'll be a boy and you won't be allowed to play with us anymore. That's a very basic year two science. Now, some of that that Joanne said, I may have fictionalised for dramatic effect, but Tara's reply to Joanne is genuinely true. She continued walking past the girls' queue towards the boys' toilet and said,

Oh Joanne, it's all just poo and wee. And for my whole life I held this in my heart and thought it was all just poo and wee and the toilet a locale of unbridled fun. In fact, my favourite part of any night out is my journey to the loo. Picture the scene. It's 20 years after Tara made her radical statement and you're at the 28th birthday of an old school friend who still uses gay as an insult. Because you want to prove that, yeah you've appeared on Richard Osmond's House of Games,

but you're still just Chloe from the Block. You sip in a Bacardi Breezer because Belushi's Kingston doesn't serve neck oil. You've grown tired of detaching men from your straight friends who seem to regard their tiny bums as a docking port. You've forgotten what a consent is. Blurred lines plays on repeat. You're not in your East London echo chamber anymore. At this point, you decide to take refuge in the bathroom.

The door labeled dames or sluts and whores, or you don't have to own 20% less than we here, but it helps. Closes softly behind you, drowning out the sound of muffled nagging. It's then that you see her in the queue, your new best friend, in the entire world, who you will never text, see, nor think about ever again. But in that moment you would die for her. This woman will always be called Amanda,

without exception, and she'll greet you with some profound words like, oh, I'm busting for a waz, babes. You'll reply with something witty like, ha ha, yeah, me too. And then you're locked in for the night. She'll then reach into her clutch which will be cavernous and Mary Poppins like and contains everything you could possibly want and or need. Tampons, hat stand, hair of your recent ex so she can cast a curse upon her and her extended family.

Out of it she'll pull something and say, "'This is for you, babes. "'You'll look lovely in this, babes.' And you'll say, "'Sorry, Amanda, you think I'll look lovely "'in this glossy A lipstick?' And she'll say, "'Yeah, babes, it will look lovely

"'with your button-down corduroy shirt, chinos, "'and Doc Martens.' Because Amanda is so straight, she couldn't even conceive of the fact that you're a lesbian. She just assumes that you're a straight woman that's come to an R&B night in fancy dresses and Ann's builder. But recently the Amandas in my life have been replaced by a different sort of person that

I encounter in the loo. I was recently watching a film at the Southbank Centre because I was trying to wash belushis out of my skin by doing something cultural. And because I was being cultural, I only had the six pints with my film. And like my popcorn, I finished them all during the trailers. So as soon as the credits started to roll, I had to run to the toilet. I thought, this is great. I'll kill two birds with one stone, I'll get to Wee Quick, and I'll get in there faster than the prying eyes of the ladies who think I'm an impolite young man. But I wasn't quite quick enough, because a tiny older woman apparated before me.

This woman, she holds out her arms and says, you can't go in here. I say, yes I can. She says, this isn't the gender neutral toilet. I was like, well that sounds like you've done the woke theory but not the woke practical. Tell us more about the model of the toilet. Whoa, sorry, who the hell are you? Why me? Why, I'm the ghost of Sir Thomas Crapper.

What are you doing here? As the most successful sanitary engineer in history, it was foretold on my deathbed that when someone said toilet, or a variant thereof, over 13 times on the nation's most popular talking radio channel, I would roll so hard in my grave that I would torpedo out. I'm like Candyman, but with less murder and more kooky. You don't half look like TV's eighth favourite comedian Edward Great British Men You Gamble. Well I don't know who that man is but he sounds very handsome and generous with his time to up and coming comics. This makes no sense. Why are you here?

You are about to go on a voyage to uncover the history of the loo. And I can't let you do that without the nation's greatest toilet expert fact checking you along the way. Think of me as your toilet attendant, your ghost of crapmas past. So you're not here as a narrative contrivance to add dynamism to a radio show that was beginning to lag. Absolutely not. No, no, no. I'm just here for the hard scientific toilet facts. It's just I'm less interested in toilet inventions and technology. I'm more interested in the social side of things and how people interact and engage with each other within them. Oh dear. I've heard about your lot. You're one of the guardian reading tofu eating Wokerati.

Well, it's a good source of protein. So I suppose this show is going to be all about gender politics, is it? Well, not necessarily. Yeah, the conversation we're having at the moment around toilets is about gender, but that's just one moment in history. I'm interested in what they've meant to humans since toilets began. In episode two, for instance, I'll be looking at the primitive privy and how first settlements led to hierarchies that divided who could go where based on whether you were richer or poorer and where this sense of shame around

going to the toilet came from. Social hierarchies, yawn. You should be focusing on the first flushing toilet in the Minoan dwelling of Knossos. It had drains leading to nearby waterways. Oh wow. So then in episode three I'll be looking at the Victorians. You'll love that. And the invention of the first public toilet and how women weren't allowed to go to them. Oh poor ladies.

Not getting to experience my invention of floating ballcocks and U-Bens. Yeah, ballcocks, U-Bens, great. But then in episode four I'll be looking at the 20th century and you're also going to love this, Sir Thomas, the moral panic around cottaging. Cottaging? How provincial? I don't know what it is, but it can't be more interesting than the invention of the first cistern to sit on top of the toilet in the early 1900s.

Hmm, okay. Well, I can see we're a bit divided about what's important with the history of the loop, but I've never had a Victorian ghost as a friend before, so you can stick around and we'll see how this goes. Yes, I will be sticking around. I can't have you sully in the good scientific name of the toilet with nonsense about social history and culture. So we'll see you throughout the series? Yes, and probably when you most expect it. LAUGHTER Goodbye, Sir Thomas. Goodbye, Sir Chloe.

LAUGHTER Right, that's it for today. This is Toilet Humor. In case you haven't got it after all, that is my exploration of what losers meant to people throughout history. I've been Chloe Petz. This has been Toilet Humor. Join me.

And me, Ed Ga- Sir Thomas Crapper. In Toilet Humor. As we go potty about the potty in Toilet Humor. It's Toilet Humor. Oh, sorry, I've just checked and actually I can't walk through walls. What's the word for it? It's a word for it. What's the word for it? It's a word for it. What's the word for it? It's a word for it. What's the word for it? It's a word for it.

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What's the word for it? It's a word for it. What's the word for it? It's a word for it. What's the word for it? and is an Avalon production from BBC Radio 4. Thanks for listening to the Comedy of the Week podcast from BBC Radio 4. If you want more, check out the Friday Night Comedy podcast, featuring The News Quiz and Dead Ringers. Can you just tell me who he is? No. Has he got any distinguishing features? His anonymity. What's his name?

Banksy. I'm James Peake and I'm on a mission to find out how Banksy became the world's most famous and infamous living artist. He could literally be anyone. Banksy essentially humiliates the art world. With dealers, critics and someone who once worked deep inside Banksy's secret team. Do you wish you didn't know anyone? Sometimes I wish I'd never heard of Banksy's secret team. Do you wish you didn't know he was? Ha ha ha! Sometimes I wish I'd never heard of Banksy.

The Banksy Story with me, James Peake, on Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds. How's he smell? Like paint.