AS EXCUSES go for leaving the workplace, it has to be one of the best.

Canadian MP Pat Martin left a crucial vote in a hurry - because of his tight underpants….

He told the bewildered speaker in the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa that he had to leave because a cheap job lot of undies he’d spied in a local store meant he couldn’t sit still long enough to take part in the vote because they were too small...

Sets you thinking doesn’t it? For I’ve heard – and used – countless excuses in my time to get out of work. But struggling with tight knickers isn’t one of them.

When I was working in Corporate Land I did get down to a fine art the croaky, faint and vaguely wobbly voice I cranked up when calling the boss to win myself an illicit day off. And I wasn’t the only one.

As excuses go it’s a bit lame to come out with gory puke and squitter details because it’s all a bit obvious and doesn’t really show much imagination, especially if you happened to have been at the office knees-up the night before.

And it also means that when you really are barfing your last meal down the lavatory bowl there’s less likelihood of the boss believing you, unless you call him in full flow so he gets all the sound effects in wraparound sound, or you drag yourself into the office and barf all over his suit as living proof of your condition…

Next to saying you’re poorly sick and under the doctor with a shawl, blaming public transport is probably the most popular excuses for being late.

I reckon the number of people who claim their bus has broken down on any given working day means every city and town centre up and down the land should regularly be littered with clapped out omnibuses.

So much so that anyone making the journey to work in a car would quite clearly be late to the office because of the need to negotiate their way round a twisting obstacle course of double deckers.

If it’s not buses it’s trains that didn’t come, wouldn’t start, were running late, broke down, got stuck behind a slow-moving freight train, or hit something on the track. Trains provide a pretty useful excuse in normal working circumstances unless, of course, you work for the railway.

When I was working for the Fat Controller, woe betide anyone who erroneously blamed the train service for their non-appearance in the office.

For practically everyone on the railway knows the timetable as well as the freckles on their face and can access the real time state of the service as fast as a blow on their whistle.

So if you said your train was late it really was and no one batted an eyelid. And if the service was really fouled up – overhead wires down, too much snow – then no one was arriving or going anywhere any time soon so you could quietly slink off and throw your sickie without you having to concoct an excuse and no one being any the wiser.

But back to the MP with the tight underpants. Bizarre as his reason was for walking off the job, so to speak, there are plenty of excuses that can match it.

One employee didn’t show up for work because he was sitting in the bathroom (tight underpants round his ankles maybe?) and his feet and legs fell asleep. Then when he finally stood up, he fell over and broke his ankle.

Another gave the office a miss because they’d just put a casserole in the oven, someone else woke up in a good mood and didn’t want to ruin it, while one hapless office worker had a “lucky night” and woke up not knowing where they were.

One man gave his shift a miss because he put his uniform in the microwave to dry and it caught fire, while another bright spark “accidentally” got on a plane. Where to? Australia. Quite how anyone can actually get that far in this day and age without being frogmarched off by the UK Border Agency beats me, but it’s one heck of an excuse to floor the boss with.