Phil: The 5-page challenge is going well. I’ve knocked out the basic story for the scene. Now it needs a few more laughs injected into it. So I’m asking for your help.
In the scene, a handbag is dropped and it’s contents spill out. If this happened to you, what could be the most embarrassing item on display ?
A few rules:
My scene featured two female characters, so we are looking for something that you (assuming you are a lady – dressing like on at the weekend doesn’t count) would be ashamed for another women to see.
- No sanitary products. There are a couple of reasons. The first I won’t tell you but it relates to the place all this is happening. The second, men can find tampons embarrassing but not women (If the mere mention of a tampon makes you snigger, you are a teenage boy. This blog, and our book, is not for you, please go to your newsagent where you will find magazines with ladies showing their boobies. Bye-bye). On the other hand men don’t understand why the wrong colour lip-gloss is a major disaster. It’s a gender thing.
- No electric willies. That one’s been done a million times. Boring.
- No gimp masks. See above.
- Whips. Seriously, no one carries these in handbags do they ?
Please drop suggestions in the comments section below. The authors decision is final. If we really like your idea, perhaps we’ll sign your copy of the book for free at a major launch event in the future. We might even let you have a photo taken with us. If it’s absolutely brilliant, so funny it gets us a publishing deal, we’ll buy you a cake at the same time. A nice one too, not some supermarket multi-pack jobbie.
Note: For those wondering why I don’t just ask Nolan to come up with an idea, I’m sure she has never carried anything embarrassing in her handbag and if she has, it might be better for our friendship that I stay innocent of its contents. Anyway, at the moment all I’d get suggested would be fake tan – “I wouldn’t want anyone thinking my healthy glow wasn’t real, would I ?”
I would go with something for those easily hidden, common, but non-serious conditions everyone experiences at one point or other, but hate to admit. A tube of lamisil or tinactin, even a small roll of silver duct tape for a small case of plantar’s warts.
Battery operated willy. Ha! I beat the rules by making it battery operated instead of electric!
That says more about you than you might like…
I hope your Mother isn’t reading this !
I thought it was your handbag so I hope YOUR mother isn’t reading. Tee hee.
If it was MY handbag then I think my mother would be worried even before the contents were spilled !
But she will be proud of how you coordinated your heels, belt, and handbag to match your outfit Phil.
You don’t know my Mum. On the other hand, Candice would be impressed if I showed a bit of fashion sense. Well, maybe. There might be room for only one stylish person in this writing team and I have a feeling it isn’t ever going to be me.
A pedometer with a stopwatch, balloon
Screwdriver and a rubber ball
Large feather and an eye mask
Box of Viagra
Photo of Simon Cowell
A hairnet
Trouble is, unless it relates to sex it’s not very embarrassing……
Neil. You have thought a lot about this haven’t you.
I’m not so sure about this. Sex might sell but thinking outside the box (or bag) can provide a surprise. We are talking women to women embarrasment here so the hairnet sounds like a definite posibility.
Another posibility is teeth. I once worked with someone who surprised us all one day by showing that she carried around her wisdom teeth in her bag. Teeth removed many years before so not just left in there after a trip to the tooth doctor. Keeping these seems to be a more common female trait than I had expected…
For really outside the box though, my friend Chris suggested a vial containing the ashes of a dead hampster.