The IT support chaps and chapesses among you doubtless have a few entertaining war stories regarding preposterous causes of system outages, and we'd like to offer you this fine Friday the tale of the cantankerous crapper and the company server.

Reader Stuart Drabble wrote to explain that in his almost 15 years of IT support, he'd "heard many horror stories which have caused servers to go down", but had never encountered an IT-busting toilet.

Earlier this week, Stuart's server monitoring software indicated that a client's box situated in a cabin in rural Norfolk had fallen over.

He rang to see what was going on, and was told that someone flushing the toilet had tripped the power to the entire building. Stuart wisely decided not to get his hands dirty, and left the matter to a plumbing SWAT team who eventually discovered that a pump in the company's cesspit was popping the fuses whenever anyone flushed the bog.

Cue a waste system purge in the hope that dislodging any stubborn solids in the pipework might solve the problem, although Stuart reported that it seemed likely someone might have to enter the merdurinous hellhole to confront the pump face-to-face.

Well, since we know you lot are sitting around today twiddling your thumbs while thirstily awaiting the arrival of pub-o'clock, why not put your time to constructive use and suggest alternative headlines for this improbable compooter* tale? ®

Bootnote

*That's Stuart's effort, to get you started...