Taking it too far.
I imagine most groups of friends have one. The one who doesn't get the difference between gentle (or even not so gentle) pisstaking and being just generally oikishly offensive. The one where, after they tell a joke, there's always a gentle pause and a "...for fuck's sake" from someone in the assembled masses. I'm not even necessarily talking about foot in mouth syndrome, which can afflict even the best of us on occasion, as as soon as you say it, you want to quietly pop into a corner, and gently mutilate yourself until the sheer horror of your spazzy tongue subsides. I'm talking about the kind of person who would make a dead baby joke at the Stillbirth Trust and then say "what? You lot have no fucking sense of humour" as the room attained the temperature of liquid nitrogen.

At uni, ours was Damon. Damon grew up in Cornwall and was one of those people who should never have been allowed to reach puberty, let alone a higher education institution. Like many of these friendships, he joined our group by a process of osmosis, in that there were only 8 blokes on our course, and once you ruled out the born again Christians, there were few of us who could go and drink beer, order pizza and throw gherkins at the foreign students from our halls kitchen.

One evening, we had all gathered in Dave's kitchen. Dave was the linchpin of our group, as he had a big kitchen, accepting flatmates who would always exchange a bit of weed for alcohol and pizza, and an unerring ability to find women to join the party.

Sadly, one of our mates, Mark, had just lost his dad due to a very sudden and aggressive case of cancer. Mark is one of the loveliest guys you would ever meet, so we were all gutted for him and decided to get him drunk to help him feel better.

Whiskey and consolations were in full flow, when Damon turned up.
"Hello Mark. Hear your Dad's dead. Cancer's just God's way of telling you that you've been annoying him, innit?"

Now, to this day we didn't know whether he was trying to make a joke and it came out wrong, or he was just a dick, but the room went silent. Mark politely excused himself and walked outside for some quiet time. Dave opted for "Christ Damon, you are a senseless cunt sometimes" to which the reply "What?" was gained from Damon. Anyway, the party started again. I went out to have a chat with Mark and a smoke and a beer later, all was well.

About 30 minutes later I get a text from Dave. It simply said "watch for my signal". By the fact that a few other people got their phones out, it was clearly a group text. Suddenly, Dave stood up, grabbed Damon by the shoulders and removed him from the kitchen more rapidly than a Tory MP removes a dead prostitute from his bathtub. We followed Dave and a loudly protesting Damon down the corridor to the cleaner's cupboard. With our assistance and a roll of gaffer tape, Damon's hands and feet were bound with many a loud protest.

"Right dickcheese, this'll teach you to think before you open your mouth." muttered Dave. He thrust some balled up fabric into Damon's open mouth, taped it closed with some gaffer tape and closed him in the cupboard. We went back to the kitchen for more beer and pizza.

Before we went out to the union, we decided to relent and release Damon. After ripping off the gaffer tape and removing the fabric from his mouth, Dave airily asked Damon if he'd enjoyed the set of his used underpants, the gusset of which had been pressed to the roof of his mouth for the last 2 hours.

There was a bit of vomit then.
( Undercovercarrot got done for gross misconduct on..., Thu 19 Sep 2013, 17:36, 2 replies)

Why didn't you just murder him?

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Thu 19 Sep 2013, 21:18, closed)

Too much paperwork?

( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 20 Sep 2013, 16:34, closed)