"I've been everywhere and seen everything," said Alex Kaughman, a retired physician from Baltimore and a passenger on the QE2's 1995 world cruise, "but this was a first for me.

"Tonight I laughed so hard I wet my pants! They had this pickpocket guy?" Kaughman interrupted himself as he broke into a fresh fit of laughter. "What a commentary on the human condition!" he managed.

"I could hardly see through the tears," said Kaughman's female companion. "But I kept my legs crossed the whole hour."

Similar sentiments were sounded round the jam-packed Queen's Lounge Bar apres-show, where patrons seemed uniformly dehydrated due to the loss of bodily fluids through one orifice or another.

"It was day 42 of our circumnavigation," gushed one slightly inebriated passenger who understandably wished to remain unnamed. "And frankly, it was becoming a bit of a bore. Until tonight, that is. I must say, I've never laughed so hard in my life."

The QE2, calling on Hong Kong February 26-28, picked up [who else but] Bob Arno there, to whom this mass loss of bladder control is attributed.

"The reaction is not uncommon," Mr. Arno explained, "particularly when one is supremely attentive and/or water retentive," he said, obviously referring to the widespread liquid seepage. "Or anal retentive," he added with a wink.