When you are sat on the Tube there is nothing quite so desperation-inducing as the need to go to the toilet. For a Number One, I should clarify.

With the lack of public toilets on the London Underground, and the poor standard of train toilets, it is quite a common occurrence to arrive at a train station with a bladder on the verge of bursting. Which is what happened on Friday afternoon.

After a Circle Line journey of approximately three days the tube arrived at Kings Cross and I speed-waddled to the public toilets. Whereupon I was confronted by a machine that annoyingly demanded a twenty pence piece in order to allow access to the porcelain heaven that was now in plain sight.

Of course, I did not have a twenty pence piece. That would have made a very boring blog post, and nowadays my life seems to be continually conspiring against me in order to provide blog material. I did have several pound coins though, and so tried each of them in turn in the change machine that the toilet bandits had so helpfully provided. As you would expect, none of them worked. Each pound coin was returned to me without changing into five twenty pees that I so desperately needed.

I think it was at this point that I started to emit a low resonating moan, as my bladder has this happy knack of knowing when I am within ten feet of a toilet. It completely ignores my wishes and begins to relax, ensuring there is no way I can go elsewhere to find another toilet.

I decided to flout the rules and climb over the turnstile, an activity which they are specifically designed to prevent. It is very very difficult to climb over something which exists solely to stop people climbing over it. It was satisfying to know that if I am ever imprisoned I will not find escaping from prison too daunting.

I had just about managed to get one leg over the top when I was approached by a man in a luminous jacket.

“You have to pay” he said.

“I don’t have a twenty pee, and your machine isn’t giving change.”

“Oh, OK.”

And with that he opened the barrier and I made a dash for the nearest urinal and the heavenly release it allowed me.

Whilst relieving myself (with a wee, there were people around and I was late for a train, so had no time for anything else) the situation of charging for a wee became more and more ridiculous to me.

It is not like you can choose not to have a piss, is it? I am being unduly penalised for trying to drink two litres of water a day like most health experts recommend. Dogs do not have to pay for a piss, so why should I? It’s not even as if the toilet was particularly salubrious. There was no soft lighting or complimentary snacks. If Stelios ever moves into the world of urine removal, this would be a perfect model for the EasyPeezy.

Unfortunately, you can not complain to someone about being nearly charged for something, so my empty bladder and I left silently to get on the train and head homeward.

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