The Hong Kong Chicken

Stevie Geddes and Andy Pollard were out on the town in Hong Kong, with Andy very much the worse for wear, and both desperate for their Nat King. Around 2am, Andy called it a night, and rang Stevie on the way back to the hotel, only to hear Stevie claiming to be entertaining two young ladies back at the club. Rather than stagger back, Andy headed back for bed, pleading with Stevie “gonnae bring us back a burd”. Another couple of phone calls followed through the early hours from the now increasingly horny Andy.

Stevie finally made his way home at dawn, just as one of the street markets was setting up. Staggering down it, he was open-mouthed at the sheer amount of live animals being hurriedly purchased by excitable locals. He settled for a chicken (having first discounted a goat on the grounds of practicality), and after persuading the stall owner not to chop it's head off then and there, somehow managed to smuggle it live past reception in the hotel with it under his piper jacket, whilst calmly chatting to the receptionist.

On getting back to the room, Geddes opened the door, shouted “Andy, I’ve got that bird for you”, and threw it in and slammed the door shut to the sounds of Pollard’s screams. After finally opening the door again, and in floods of tears, they captured the bird then took it down the corridor where the scene was repeated in Akie Green’s room – by now, all the excitement was proving a little too much for the poor bird’s digestive system, and it let itself go with gay abandon all over the sheets in Akie’s room.

Having finally recovered, and been able to trap the bird in the bathroom, the plotters came up with a masterstroke –Tam Coyle and Jim Brown had set off first thing to take a boat trip to Macau for the day. A room key was swiftly blagged off a passing cleaner, and the bird released into the wilds of Tam and Jim’s bedroom.

Many hours later, Tam and Jim got back to Hong Kong, and made their way back to the hotel via Delaney's Irish Bar, where they met up with the rest of the crowd. When they said they were heading back to the hotel to freshen up, Andy said he would head back with them, as he had stuff to pick up. When they got back to the hotel, the receptionist explained the manager wanted to speak with them. Tam and Jim were bemused at this, whilst Pollard lurked in the background stifling a big grin. The irate manager stormed out of his office, shaking his finger and threatening to throw them out for “breaking hotel rules”. “No pets! No pets!” the manager affirmed, to Tam and Jim’s confusion; “but we don’t have any pets” came the reply. He marched them up to their room, with Geddes and Pollard (who had been lurking in reception, awaiting this very moment) following closely behind, and opened the door. Sat in the middle of the bedroom floor was a large cardboard box with the flaps folded over… Jim approached it and booted it on the side… the startled chicken leapt about three foot in the air like a jack in the box as Jim leapt backwards swearing..

Pollard were in tears on the corridor floor by this point, as a bemused Jim and Tam remonstrated with the aggravated manager. Only an apology from Andy prevented them being turfed out, as Coyle threatened all kinds of imaginative revenge.

Further animal-related msiadventures followed, notably including a squid jammed onto the door handle of someone’s room, but Coyle backed down from the ultimate revenge, claiming that would be taking it just too far!

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The Dirty Protest

The Tartan Army had not been too kind to this particular hotel. A few days earlier, Tartan Army stalwart and badge entrepreneur Kevin “Disco” Donnelly had woken up to a scene of some devastation in his hotel bathroom. The first words he used to sum it were “I thought I’d been a victim of some kind of dirty protest” – faecal matter was smeared up the bathroom wall, on the floor, on the seat cover, and when he lifted it up (carefully, we can only presume), on the inside of the cover and all over the pan. Retiring back to bed, feeling rather unwell, Kevin knew that he was not the guilty party on this occasion*, so when his room-mate Mark returned to the room half-an-hour later after going out for breakfast, Kevin reasoned with him…

[Mark was from Western Australia, and had been brought on the trip by Ross and Davie of ANZTA (Australia and New Zealand Tartan Army) – his first ever time outside of Oz. Mark was wearing a borrowed kilt, and couldn’t contain his excitement at being abroad for the first time, smiling and joking with everyone.]

… “What the f*ck have you done to the bathroom?” Kevin enquired, as Mark peeked into the scene of the crime. “It wasn’t me, mate. Strewth, it wasn’t me”, Mark replied, pressing his innocence, looking perplexed as he sat down on his bed to try and think about what had happened. As Kevin carried on ranting, Mark got up to take another look, only to leave a perfectly formed brown @rse print on the white bed linen. As Kevin pointed this out to him, Mark turned white and hurriedly whipped off his kilt, revealing tell-tale stains down the back of his thighs. Closer inspection of the kilt itself revealed the pleats themselves were sodden.

So what happened? Well, piecing together the events, it seems Mark came in late the previous night, and having been on the lager all night, felt the need to empty his bowels before bedtime. Being a novice in the kilt-wearing stakes, he had forgotten to remove it or move it out of the way, and simply sat down and let it all go (which it did, and in all directions).

The postscript to this sordid story was that a few days later, in one of Hong Kong’s many pub-cum-brothels, Mark accepted favours off a working lady, who administered hand-relief under his kilt, merely adding to the cocktail of bodily substances now ingrained in the very fabric of the plaid.

We can only imagine the look on the face of the proud kilt-owner when Mark handed it back over!

* Kevin himself had been the victim of a nasty tummy bug one night in Paris a few months earlier – although some may say that Adam Tracey, who was kipping on the floor, and woke up with his face a few inches from Kevin’s steaming deposit was more of a victim in that instance!

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