BY the time you read this, I should be back at home, recuperating after losing a stone in a single afternoon.

No, it’s not my version of Peter Kay’s character who lost “fowerteen stone in a day!” – the stone in question is a gallstone, apparently approaching the size of a golf ball, which has been playing havoc with my innards for many months now.

I just hope it all went well, for I had visions of me whizzing round the operating theatre, clattering off lights like a balloon released before the knot has been tied, as soon as the surgeon jabbed his scalpel into my prodigious belly

Goodness knows what horrors may lurk in the hogshead I have where other blokes have a six pack – there are those who have suggested I may have had something to do with that nasty smell which closed 20 miles of the A68 last week!

I just hope there were no naked flames in the vicinity, for any gaseous eructations which may have been released may well have burnt the hospital down.

I seem to have a penchant for creating foreign bodies in my portly person – over a decade ago, I was frequently left writhing and weeping in agony by kidney stones, and recall presenting myself for an X-ray at hospital, begging for some pain relief.

The response I received was less than sympathetic: “Keep still and stop being a baby! I only do pictures, not pain!”

I was staggered to eventually discover, when I painfully passed the stone some days later, that the thing which had left me in hours of excruciating agony was only about the size of a clementine pip.

Before they were surgically removed at the Freeman Hospital, the kidney stones cost me a small fortune in prescription painkillers, not to mention leaving me as punctured as a pin cushion with numerous blissful but short-acting injections.

I do recall being given a prescription for some particularly powerful tablets which I handed in at a chemist’s in the Metrocentre.

It took a long time to complete and when I glanced up at the dispensary, I saw several members of staff peering at me with deep suspicion, as though expecting to see some drug-raddled, down-and-out rather than a semi-respectable chubby chap with a pained expression.

One of them went to the phone – I suspect to summon a constable – before two members of staff came out together to hand me my tablets, as though they were radioactive isotopes.

I still had to give my name and address and the name of my GP twice before they let me have the innocent-looking pink pills.

I suspect they may have been some sort of morphine derivative, but when the snake in my back bit, they failed to take even the slightest edge off the pain, so they were flushed down the loo.

When I did finally get the kidney stones extracted under the knife, staff at the Freeman gave me a tinkling test tube full of stones as a souvenir, and for days after the operation, I added to my little treasure trove every time I went to the loo.

Alas, Mrs Hextol ruled that it was not hygienic to keep rejected body parts in the bathroom cabinet, and binned the lot.

That being said, I had high hopes of retrieving the planet- sized major gallstone which has been orbiting my insides for months, as I believe they can be quite pretty when disinfected and polished up.

Whereas a lot of gall bladder problems are caused by a meteor shower of small stones, my scan seemed to indicate just one monster rattling round , pausing every now and then to block ducts and cause chaos.

I had visions of retrieving the stone from the operating theatre bin, and after whacking it around a bit to let it know what it was like to be in pain, handing it to a lapidarist friend, with instructions to turn it into a ring or a nice pair of cufflinks.

Sadly, my hopes were dashed when the nurse who carried out my pre-op assessment announced that you no longer get your bits back due to much more stringent infection regulations.

Although the operation was due to be a “keyhole” procedure, I cannot lift anything heavier than a pint pot for a month while extensive internal wounds heal.

That means time has been called on my horsey exploits to avoid a nasty mess of spilled innards on the pristine stable floor!