Welcome to our semi-regular feature – Ask the Rev – where leading paranormal expert and ordained priest (in the Church of Jesus the Latter Day Naturist) Reverend Leonard Fanny addresses our readers’ supernatural personal problems. This time the Rev’s expertise is required to deal with the case of being ‘Love Hungry’.
Dear Reverend,
I hope you will forgive me for contacting you about a matter that doesn’t really fall into what would usually be described as ‘supernatural’. Nor does it involve aliens or bizarre scientific experiments gone wrong. Indeed, I suspect it to be a straightforward case of fraud, but the problem lies with trying to prove it. To cut to the chase, my brother-in-law has taken to claiming that he no longer needs to eat or drink in order to stay alive. Indeed, he claims not to have eaten anything for several months now and says that the only liquids he imbibes are alcoholic and purely for pleasure rather than sustenance. Incredibly, instead of wasting away and dying of starvation, the bugger remains a strapping, rugby playing and very solid presence. Indeed, I’d swear that he’s actually put weight on since starting this nonsense. Now, rather than claiming to be one of those ‘breathatarians’, sustained by fresh air alone, or even to be somehow solar powered, drawing energy from the sun, he is claiming that he gets all the sustenance he needs from having copious amounts of sex, whether it be oral or regular. Naturally, his wife – my sister – can’t provide him with all the sex he needs to live, so he has to get daily doses from various other women. Incredibly, my sister seems to have swallowed this ludicrous nonsense hook, line and sinker and happily goes along with his adultery.
Now, it seems obvious to me that the bastard is weaving a bizarre deception in order to have his cake and eat it, so to speak, on the sex front, by staying with my sister while simultaneously getting his end away with a series of mistresses and, frankly, anything else in a skirt he can get his hands on. The problem is that it is proving impossible to catch him out. Since he started this non-eating business I, personally, haven’t seen any food pass his lips, either when they’ve been round at our house, or we’ve been at theirs. I’ve even had a private detective carry out extensive surveillance on him, following him around, bugging his house and setting up hidden cameras in his workplace. But still there has been no evidence of him eating: no surreptitious visits to MacDonald’s, no going through bins looking for past-its-sell-by-date food or discarded scraps of pizza. It is all very perplexing. But I remain convinced that he is a fraud. Not only does he look longingly at the food when he and my sister come around for dinner, but I know that he still defecates. I mean, if he isn’t eating anything solid, then he shouldn’t be passing huge turds, should he? I know that he does thanks to the surveillance – I have audio tapes if him straining away in his bathroom then shouting in relief as he finally passes a huge stonker. My wife says that I’m being obsessive and should let it drop as my sister seems quite happy with the arrangement. I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand by while the git takes advantage of my sister via this blatantly fraudulent behaviour! I’m guessing, Reverend, that you will have had some experience of debunking fraudulent supernatural activity – so I’d welcome your suggestions as to how to catch my brother-in-law out in his lies.
T. Krapper, Twyford
The Rev Replies: A most perplexing conundrum! I have indeed had experience of uncovering supernatural hoaxes – you will doubtless recall the case of the ‘Beast of Bracknell’, where I was able to prove that the hairy molester of local shop girls was, in fact, the result of a retired school master overdosing on his monkey gland treatment, rather than being a supernatural apparition. The secret in such successes is figuring out just howthe deception works. In the Bracknell case, for instance, it was the fact that, when he was seen swinging from a lamppost in order to peer through a victim’s bedroom window, the so-called beast was wearing varifocal spectacles. That, combined with hairs he left behind at the scene of a particularly savage bottom groping, which were identified as coming from a species of monkey whose glands were regularly harvested to produce an illegal virility treatment, allowed me to identify the true culprit.
In the case of your brother-in-law, the key lies in figuring out exactly how he is eating without being detected. Because I agree with you, he is clearly practicing a deception and his claim of getting sustenance from sex is clearly a subterfuge – the sex act actually uses copious amounts of energy on the part of both participants, depleting his own reserves even further. AS for exactly how he is secretly eating, I seem to recall seeing this chap on a late night Channel 4 series some years ago, when he demonstrated to Jonathon Ross how he could eat a Big Mac with his arse. He went on to drink and entire milk shake by sucking it up with his penis. Apparently, it was all a matter of training. Could it be that you brother-in-law has similarly trained himself to eat this way? Could it be that, when he appears to be quietly sitting down behind his desk, his posterior is surreptitiously scoffing a ham sandwich? Perhaps further investigation of his backside – looking for evidence of crumbs, maybe – could be the way forward for you in exposing this charlatan. I hope this has been of some help.
The Rev will be back soon to give more advice on your paranormal problems. So, if your sex life is a hump in the night or you find yourself nocturnally plagued by the attentions of a spectral groper, drop us a line.
(The Rev is also available for weddings, christenings and exorcisms, the latter only on Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons).
