CANCER PRANKSTER

One thing we've all wanted to do at one time or another is to make a friend or relative believe they have cancer. No more need you pray to Zeus, Jupiter or Thor to give your dreams substance; you can pray to me. Here for all you cruel bastards who enjoy watching people close to you rampant with fear, and with gloved doctors rooting around inside them is the prankster's guide to cancer.

Although some people will extol the benefits of drawing a large freaky-looking mole on the victim's lower back (i.e out of easy eye-line), I find from experience that this is fraught with perils. Firstly, you must be close enough to the person to be able to draw on them while they are sleeping, secondly they must be a reasonably heavy sleeper, and finally you must be enough of an artist to be able to represent a cancer-ridden mole with only an old dried-out permanent marker. I knew an Oscar-winning special effects artist who was able to create a prosthetic lump that could easily be glued on to the victim as required, but still the problems of getting close enough presented themselves. My preferred method, and the one that I will use maybe six or seven times a month, is internal cancer. Bowel cancer. It's so easy to fake, and will scare the shit (better pun intended, but I was left with that) out of your victim so much that they will be begging a doctor to stick his/her hands in their arse within an hour. I guarantee it, or my name isn't Mosey Q Abernac III.

When creating the semblance of cancer, beetroot is your friend. No longer is beetroot the poor cousin to the jiggly bosoms of the lady with extreme sunburn. Like most friends, when ingested, beetroot will colour your shit red. It'll look like you're bleeding out of your arse. It'll look like you have bowel cancer. Sometimes this kind of thing is just too easy. But but but but but, this is where it gets just a little bit tricky. If you force-feed your guests beetroot against their will (well, of course if you're force-feeding it's against their will, unless it's a weird S&M game, which I guess could be construed as consensual force-feeding), then they're gonna twig if they start shitting red. The answer is, dear pranksters, to hide the beetroot. All you need to do is place large pulped quantities of it in something with a strong colour and flavour of its own. My suggestion would be curry, but I know people who have hidden beetroot in highly-seasoned pasta sauces, and even in some rather avant garde ice cubes. As to the exact quantities to use, I'm afraid I cannot be too sure: I know not how spicy you make your ice cubes, and how sensitive to the taste of beetroot your friends' palates are. All I can say is add small quantities of beetroot, tasting all the time as you go. Get as much as you can in, without ever revealing a hint of beetroot.

There is a further element to this prank that, if my knowledge of lubricants or contracted sphincters were greater, I could enact. Perhaps you can help me with the answers. Is there something that counteracts the effect of whatever lubricant doctors use? Is there something that will cause an arsehole to constrict until nothing larger than a malteser can pass through without a fuckload of pain? If you know of such substances, would you please let me know. These wonderful substances could be applied in secret to the toilet paper in your house, to be transferred on to the arsehole of your victim shortly before they run screaming in fear to their doctor. When dealing with bowel cancer, doctors are gonna have to get in and have a good root around for the lumps. If the lubricant doesn't work, or the hole is tighter than a really tight thing, your victim will run screaming in agony from the doctor. They may never again regain their equilibrium, they may never dare set foot inside a doctor's surgery again. They may spend their whole life in fear that they will die of bowel cancer any second. Hilarious, huh?