I had an editor known to friend and foe as The Cane Toad.
He was bombastic and tasteless - a force for idiocy - and parlayed these qualities into a successful executive career. There was a believable rumour that this frog had interviewed his job applicants while enthroned on the porcelain.
The Cane Toad eased his ample backside on to my desk, peered over his half-moon spectacles, and croaked: ''If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many peppers did Peter Piper pick?''
The Toad had me there.
''Pixty pix?'' I suggested.
He shook his chins.
''How cool is a cucumber? How slow is a snail's pace? And what's as cold as charity? Give me the answers, and 1200 words, by next Wednesday. It's our front page for the Weekend Magazine.''
The problem with The Cane Toad was that in his own quirky way he was a genius. At the end of this road was a funny, rather droll feature called ''Answers to Big Questions.''
No literary skill was required - the creativity lay entirely in the idea. All it needed was that some poor sod think up questions implied by popular sayings, and tramp off to find the answers.
I discovered a snail does 800cm per hour on a firm track. A cucumber comes out of the fridge at six degrees. The mean temperature in Charity, a small town on the Essequibo Coast of Guyana, is 27degC.
I suppose all this added to the sum of human knowledge. A week after Answers to Big Questions appeared, a publisher phoned.
''Could you stretch the idiot question idea into a book?'' he asked.
''Are you barking mad? I went to hell and back - 285 degrees Fahrenheit, by the way - and that was just the research,'' I said.
''But it's not a big book, just a stocking stuffer,'' he explained.
''Something amusing for the punters at Christmas. We bring it in cheap at 10 bucks, and tightwads buy it for their aunts and second cousins. Stocking stuffers are hot.''
I explained I had no burning ambition to write a stocking stuffer. The publisher suggested a fairly juicy cash advance. Suddenly stocking stuffing seemed a noble literary niche. The game was on.
A quick gander at this year's stocking stuffer hits will suggest what we were up against. Knit Your Own Cat; How to Talk to Women; Farts in the Wild - A Spotter's Guide; The Hangover Cookbook; Winning Lotto for Everyday Players; More Joy - An Advanced Guide to Solo Sex.
All this may sound a doddle, but writing a stocking stuffer took three months off my life. The book was a monster, and I became a morose, useless dinner companion, whose conversation kept returning to the same gnawing toothache.
''Forget world poverty and the cricket. I'm still 20 stupid questions short of a very stupid book. Can anyone help?
''No, I've got what's dirt cheap. Cheap dirt's $1.60 a bag. It takes six litres to fill your boots - if they're size nine Wellingtons.
''But you say phone a brothel to check the wages of sin? Nice idea! Only 19 to go!''
Eventually the job was done. I gave it to the publisher who'd provided an illustrator, and a month later the proofs came back from Hong Kong. I read them, appalled. It had been trying enough, but the publisher's editor had run some serious interference.
The thought of arguing the toss line by line was exhausting. I was bored and the advance was long spent, so I wrote it off as a bad experience.
Still, the publisher sent another decent cheque, wild praise, and news that my stocking stuffer was a sell-out. (How very true).
I'd presumed this embarrassing book had safely sunk without trace. But going online to check, I discovered there's a book dealer in Katoomba with a copy, and another in some joint called Goshen, Indiana. Suddenly, I'm not totally opposed to book burning.
Still - Merry Christmas, and good luck with your stocking stuffing. And I didn't forget. How many puckled peckers in a pock? Give or take, it's 107.
John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.
