Reporters do not always treat subs well. On occasion, when pushed beyond endurance by the cutting of our best lines, or a puritan purge of all our gags, we tell the old joke about the plane carrying a sub and a reporter crashing in the Sahara. For three days they walk through the burning heat until finally they collapse, skin burning, throats parched, at the base of a huge sand dune. ‘Let us just climb to the top of the dune,’ croaks the reporter.
‘I can’t,’ says the sub, ‘let us curl up here and die’.
‘No!’ says the reporter, ‘we must make one last effort.’ And somehow they haul their dehydrated bodies, two steps forward, one step back, to the top to see…a beautiful blue oasis on the other side.
They stumble down to the lake. It is not a mirage. The reporter plunges his cupped, blistered hands into the cool water of life. Only to see the sub unzip his trousers and piss in it.
“What the hell to you think you are doing,” he bellows.
“I’m making it better,” the sub replies.
Carry on reading
Nick Cohen
