Brits have a troubled relationship with poo. On the one hand – and as a UK citizen I am allowed to say this – our base humour is predominantly lavatorial. For example, in 2014 the charity WaterAid marked its World Toilet Day by judging Britian’s favourite defecation gag. My personal pick was runner up Matt Forde who quipped, “Did you hear about the film, Constipated? It never came out.”
Equally, our language has morphed into an overt celebration of a word that we struggle to utter when we are actually conducting a necessary and natural call of nature, much preferring to reference it as a “number two.” In everyday colloquial communication, we have many positive affirmations, for example: “Shit hot!” “Goes like shit off a shovel” (appertaining to something that travels fast, such as a sports car), and when we get really excited a simple “SHIT!” is all that’s needed. Conversely, we confuse matters for all other inhabitants of the world when we deploy this flexible word in its juxtaposition prose; for example, “This tastes of shit,” and when things are terrifically terrifying, “shitty death!”
How utterly refreshing it is to announce that there is at least one nation state that is happy with poo and champions its utility. In India, the humble cow poo is revered, respected, and recycled, to such an impressive extent that you can brush your teeth and bathe with it ─ in the form of soap ─ alongside many other practical and ingenious uses. Whilst staying at the beautiful Dera Mandawa hotel, I even cooked with it.
Quite unfairly, in my humble opinion, the Brits have the audacity to poke fun at this natural source of fuel, fragrance, and other fundamentals by, in the case of India in particular, referencing “having the shits” as a dose of “Delhi belly.”
So, why does this embarrassment persist, and are there any consequences to cloaking this obvious unease in humour, inuendo, and ignorance?
Leading healthcare provider BUPA pulls no punches in its analysis of the British tendency to talk about anything other than the tricky turd; more than a third of Brits would be embarrassed to visit the doctor if they experienced common symptoms of bowel cancer, including blood in poo, abdominal pain, bloating and a change in bowel habits. Indeed, a whopping two-thirds of Brits would struggle to identify a warning sign.
In an effort to ease along the conversation into this poorly understood domain, the National Health Service (NHS) have dedicated a webpage to, amongst other processes of toilet time, explaining why they have chosen to use the word “poo” as opposed to “stool.” Possibly because some patients took the requirement to bring along the latter descriptor literally, and were left wondering why it was necessary to cart their breakfast bar chair into the surgery.
Author Alice Hall gets into some serious shit in her enlightening investigation into an act that, according to Seed Health, a microbial sciences company based in Los Angeles, around seventy nine million people around the world are engaged in as you read this sentence. As she discovered, “Slowly, under the cloak of anonymity, people come forward to tell me that, yes, they find pooing pretty mortifying. I ask them, why?” Jasper, 27, who like others in this piece, has asked to remain anonymous, says, “Pooing destroys the ego ─ it strips you bare. It’s disgusting, smelly and unhygienic. You can be as charming as you want, but if people hear you taking a shit, it rips all of that away.”
Following Alice’s research strategy, I attempted to coax some of my social media contacts into coming clean on the subject of shit. Even with iron clad security, only one citizen of these catatonic shores shared their poo story. Brian’s emotional dump was heartening and heavy duty: “Being an ulcerative colitis sufferer, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve had accidents in public. For instance, walking through hotel lobbies and using lifts to get to my room, when it seemed like every guest had descended upon them, or were coming out of their rooms as I walked along the corridor to get to mine, arguing with shop assistants in order to use their toilet before I shat myself, and the times I couldn’t get from my shower to the toilet before my bowels emptied themselves. It also happened in custody while I was with you.” Please note that we once worked together in the police. “I spent the night commando style having showered.” After a clap of anal appreciation from me he added, “I could go on ─ the times I’ve been running and just had to squat right there and then, no toilet paper, just my hand and the grass to clean it off, and, on occasions, when children are around. I wouldn’t wish ulcerative colitis on anyone as you just don’t know when a relapse is going to emerge.”
For the sake of our health, we need to adopt Brian’s candour when it comes to discussing what curls out of us, and how its shape, colour, and odour can inform us about all manner of bodily risks. Shit can talk to us, but we must be prepared to listen before flushing it away in haste, like an embarrassed citizen of the Victorian era. A handy reference chart, labelled the Bristol Stool Chart, maps every conceivable crap, from Marbles to Hot Dogs, through to the chaotic Jason Pollock, and what they reveal.
The next time I’m accused of talking shite I will take this as a compliment.
© Ian Kirke 2023
@ianjkirke