Practical Jokers

I love a good practical joke, during my younger years I was very proficient in pulling off some that looking back were how can I put it not very nice. Laxatives in drinks, putting a nine volt battery upside down in a urinal so that when the urine stream hit it the person using the facilities would get a little shock in a delicate area, sending a video of a clown via Facebook Messenger to someone who was deathly afraid of them all rank in the maybe I shouldn't of done those but it seemed funny at the time.

Now before I go on I should say that no one was seriously injured by any of my pranks, maybe their pride was hurt and ego's dented but at the end of the day they were not physically harmed. You also have to remember that for the vast majority of these stories we were without television and were under the influence of alcohol for pretty much all of them. I would also like to add that they got there own back on in various ways and it was in no way a one way street!

One of the japes that still makes me smile and comes up every time we are together is the now infamous welcome to Australia room. Dave had gone away for the day and we were bored and broke, which as you can imagine was a bad thing for our overactive imaginations trying to find something to occupy our time without costing us anything. He also had a habit of leaving his door unlocked. After brainstorming for a little while Kev and me made our way upstairs and went into his room. The idea started with his CD's and DVD's which he kept in alphabetical order, so we took them and rearranged them. This was good but what about if we took them out of there cases and put them back into random ones, this was better. What if we turned the entire shelving unit upside down this was gold. We took a step back and admired our work, which took a lot longer than you would imagine as he had a vast collection of discs. We then looked at each other and around the room. A limited edition Only Fools and Horses print was on the wall in it's pretty wooden frame. Kev looked into my eyes and back at the frame and took it off the wall, slowly and then rehung it upside down. A poster was next, I do believe it was a Rancid band one but my memory may be wrong. What followed was half an hour of turning his entire room upside down. The bed, the wardrobe, the set of drawers, everything that could be turned was even the lampshade on his ceiling. As a final touch we added a crudely drawn poster saying welcome to Australia that we pinned to the outside of the door and we waited. 

We were sitting serenely on the sofas downstairs watching Weird Science (it says everything that I can remember the film we were watching over 20 years later!) when he made he entrance and announced that he was going straight to bed to recover from a hard day. Oh the profanity that came down the stairs when we realised what we'd done. He came bounding back down the stairs threatening all sorts of violent acts upon us while we sat there laughing our little heads off. A job well done, it was only a couple of days after that he realised what we'd done to his CD's and that started him off again. 10 /10 chaos would do again.

One of the more annoying things we used to do to each other on a regular basis was to change the direction of batteries in each other remote controls or remove the ball from our mouse on our PC's (yes we are that old) doing this led to a tit for tat scenario progressively getting worse, I was the victim of an egg in the end of the shoe prank just before work leaving no time for me to clean said egg out of said shoe and having to work a long shift with a very disgusting feeling and smelling foot. So what did I do to get back at the perpetrator well he made the mistake of leaving me alone in his bedroom with a can of deep heat, a quick spray in his underwear and then I played the waiting game. In all honesty I didn't have to wait more than 15 minutes before the screams that will haunt me to my dying day hit my eardrums, him rushing past us into the bathroom to try and cool down his genital area. Was that the end of that war, erm no but I don't think I can go any further for legal reasons.

At The Park, our home away from home, we were given much more scope for mischief, we saw people shrink wrapped to lampposts and pool tables. Drinks messed with, putting salt in each others drinks was a particular favourite and you shouldn't leave your drink alone at any point if you could avoid it. However it was here where of the more silly ones took place and both were directed at the same person. Marc Lee-Smith otherwise known in Luton by the name Afghan for reasons that will become apparent. 

Now picture the scene, the time was 2001 roughly two months after the infamous attacks in New York City, the whole world was in a heightened state of vigilance and Luton was a hot bed of controversy due to some sections of the inhabitants actually supporting what had happened on that awful day. Marc was a fresh faced worker at The Park and had been for a couple of weeks. My little group was all freshers experiencing the world for the first time and we can't lay claim to this prank but it did become the stuff of legend. For Marc it was a normal everyday shift, a few students stopping in between lectures, the pub having about 45 people in which was a slowish day back then.

All of a sudden the gaffer comes out of his office with a look of pure fear on his face and goes up to Marc, who the proceeds to go white as a sheet.  Marc then starts going around tables quickly leaning down and whispering to all the various groups before hurriedly moving on to the next one. We were one of the last to hear what was going on, according to the police the vacant building on the opposite side of the road had been confirmed to be an a terrorist hang out and there was the potential for explosives on site. The police were getting into position and when the signal was given we had to run out of the back door as quickly as possible. However what Marc didn't know was that about half an hour before The Gaffer had come round and briefed us that it was all a joke to initiate Marc into The Park family. After telling everyone you could see him inching closer to the exit door making sure that he would be the first out of the place and to safety. With the tension building the phone went off and The Gaffer shouted now, Marc proceeded to run off at high speed with the rest of sitting still and cheering him on, he came back in a few minutes later red faced, realising that he'd been had. So he was christened by The Gaffer with the nickname Afghan, which he kept for the duration of his stay in Luton and even now that's how everyone remembers him.

The second story is one that I take full credit for and we have to fast forward to Marc's 21st birthday and for some reason I had a picture of him standing at the urinal at The Park, you couldn't see anything down there but you could see a stream of urine emanating from his person. I took said picture and mocked up a poster saying 'Have you seen my penis? If so please contact Afghan on ......' Now looking back maybe I shouldn't have put his real number on there, maybe I shouldn't have photocopied it 50 times and put it all over the town. Maybe I shouldn't have but I did and boy did it work, he was getting phone calls months later when a new poster was discovered.

This leads me on to the point of this post. Did I do all these things, yes. Did I find them funny at the time, also yes. Would I do them again now? A resounding no, it shows how much people can change over time, what seemed like innocent fun back then now looks like borderline criminal in some instances. I don't have that in me anymore to pull the kind of stuff I thought was funny back then and I wouldn't want to, though sometimes I wish I had a camera to capture the looks on there faces when they realised what had happened to them.