Martin spreads the love even further over at BTI.

I feel the need to reciprocate, so here goes.

Part one – try putting boiling water or bleach down it. For ritual purposes only (i.e. this never works).

Part two – buy a sink plunger (from a hardware shop – you get to feel like a proper man. Just don’t get into conversations at the counter about joists or anything)

Part three – get home. Put plunger over offending plug hole. Cover up the overflow bit, with a cloth or something that will stop air or water getting out of it (if you have a double sink you have to cover the other plughole and overflow as well. You need at least 4 arms for this. If you have four arms then you could probably find lots of more productive ways to spend your time) Plunge! Plunge as if your life depended on it! About a dozen times should do it. But don’t let me stop you taking your frustrations with the sink and the capitalist society which produced it. It’s good to have some banging music on while you do this. Gabba or tech-step I reckon.

Part four – remove plunger. If the goddess is smiling on you, the water will all gurgle away and it’s job done. Run some more water down the plug hole to make sure.

Part five – turn off the music and put some reggae on, you’re going to need it. I would personally favour Sugar Minott for this sort of scenario.

Part six – get access to the u-bend underneath the sink. Probably by opening the cupboard door to reveal all sorts of vile rubbish stored under your sink, cleaning fluids from pre-decimilisation days, rusted tools, dead animals, misplaced relatives etc.

Part seven – get a bucket and put it under the u-bend. No bucket? It’s back to the hardware shop for you then, looking like a twat.

Part eight – unscrew the u-bend and marvel as murky stinking water flows all over your arms, mainly missing the bucket entirely.

Part nine – make a mental note of what the u-bend looked like so you can put it back together.

Part ten  – get a rag or something and clean out all the putrid waste material clogging up your pipes. Into the bucket.

Part eleven – try to screw it all back together again. There will probably be little rubber washers involved – you need these, they are your friends, don’t just dump them in the bucket and hope everything will be alright. They are all the seperates you from the elements (well, one of them).

Part twelve – run a bit of water through the plug hole and check to see that your u-bend hasn’t sprung a leak.

Part thirteen – wash your hands and crack open a can of red stripe. Leave the bucket in the middle of the floor to trip over later. Either what you’ve done has worked or it hasn’t. What’s done is done and it will probably all seem better in the morning. Probably.