Heavyweight moviemaker Kevin Smith is determined to shed the pounds after breaking a toilet.
The Clerks director was playing poker at a friend's Los Angeles DVD and comic book store when he was taken short and excused himself.
But when he saw the toilet bowl, which jutted out from a wall, he feared the worst - and the worst happened.
Red-faced Smith recalls, "That kind of toilet, with no base, is no friend to a fat man."
And when he sat on the lavatory, it groaned and creaked and then came away from the wall.
"The contents of the bowl was dangerously (rocking in the bowl). I'm trapped, I'm panicked and I hear somebody, like, on the other side of the door going, 'Everything OK in there?'
"I've gotta throw myself off the toilet... and I do it and I hit the door."
Eventually, his pal came to see what the commotion was: "I just point to the bowl and he looks at it and looks at the terror in my face and he realises we have a business relationship together and he goes, 'Nobody ever needs to know about this.'
"That was the moment, where I was like, 'I got to lose some weight.' I broke the porcelain in half."