COMMENT "By George! What in God's name is that foul matter on the road?"

"Beg your pardon sir. I'm afraid that it is the excrement of a creature, perhaps that of a fowl."

And so goes the legend of how the now supposedly henpecked aristocratic son of the second prime minister, who spent many years in the United Kingdom, had his first encounter with chicken poo during a visit to rural Pekan after his father's death.

Dismissing the British twist to the tale, a fellow journalist, who recounted the legend which he had extracted from the lips of a veteran newsman, was certain that the conversation, if it had indeed taken place, must have transpired in a less dramatic fashion.

So after several minutes of rapturous laughter, which drew curious stares from the other patrons in the restaurant, we could not resist taking a peck at our former prime ministers as well...