In which I suggest an honour for world statesman Recep Tayip Erdogan

Erdogan: Deserving of a singular honour

I do my best not to dine out on the fact that I once did the biggest poo of my life mere minutes before meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, my face wearing a look of abject relief and "You don't know what I know" as I pressed the flesh.

It's just a shame that the memory of my greatest personal triumph is somewhat shaded by the fact that Mr Erdogan has turned out to be - well - a bit of a turd.

From duplicitous dealings on the world and regional stage to enacting a law that makes criticism of the president illegal - leading to the harassment and arrest of Turkish journalists who now find it impossible to hold government to account without being accused of treason, he's not in my best books. And that's a shame, because it was a truly marvellous poo.

However, there is one way to rescue the situation, because it has come to my attention that there is no unit to measure the standard amount of faeces coming from the average adult human's bottom. There is a gap in medical science here that desperately needs to be filled.

Yes, we have good old pounds and ounces (the average is 4.5 oz, or 128 grams) and feet and inches (12.5 inches, or 31cm), but no single combined measure for human faeces that can be marked up on a patient's chart to determine if there might be something lodged up there that might need to be worked out with a stick.

That is, until now.

I'll be sending in an urgent application to ISO - the International Standards Organisation- to have this unit named the Erdogan. It is, I feel the very least the man deserves.

But let's be respectful. The Erdogan should not be used in a mocking manner or as a slang word ("Don't go in the end cubicle for a while - I just shat out a whole Erdogan"); but as a straight scientific term by the medical profession ("The patient passed 0.8 Erdogans of firm consistency equivalent to 4 on the Bristol Scale"). This distinction should be backed up with violence if necessary, because he is a world statesman and not a figure of fun.

Watt. Tesla. Newton. Now Erdogan. Names living on in history as scientific measures. What an honour.

Erdogan supporters: Please do not kill me.

I am not mad.