A drug company invents a new medicine. It,s a powerful aperient. It helps people with their natural body movement, shall we save.
The drugs watchdog takes one look at this preparation, and say that it is too powerful for human beings. After much tooing and froing, they licence this medicine, but only for large constipated animals, such as elephants. They sanction a final trial, but only on agreement that great safety precautions are taken.
An elephant is fed on chalk and charcoal for a fortnight, and a monkey is trained to pull a string, on a certain signal. The string is connected to a large cork, which is inserted in the elephants bum.
The elephant is given a small dose of the laxative, and three trained obeservers stand at 50, 100 and 150 yards respectively.
At the signal, the monkey pulls the string, and to the most distant man, everything goes brown.
He is immediately left standing knee deep in elephant doings. Despite his disgust, his immediate concern is for his two comrades. He grasps a shovel, and starts industriously digging in their general direction.
Finding his first colleague, he extricates him from chest high elephant poo, and despite their general despair and horror, they head for their final colleague.
To their surprise, despite the fact that he is utterly covered in excrement, he is convulsed in laughter. The man explains:
'It all went to plan, I gave the signal, and the monkey pulled the plug... It was horrendous, I had no idea that an elephant could hold so much'
'Why were you laughing?' asks one of his, by now irritable, rescuers.
'I'm sorry' he replies, 'I was fine until the monkey tried to put the bung back in'