Carte Dor

Am I the only one slightly disturbed by the Carte Dor advert? A tub of ice cream being dipped in to whilst someone sings in the background about how “you have to follow through”. Now personally prefer not to think about ice cream in the context of following through and I would have thought advertisers would have steered clear of any links between their products and crapping yourself. Then again I’ve just seen one for Canisten and their tag line is “feel yourself again”. It beggars relief really.

My real venom is saved for the utterly revolting one about the poor, badly dubbed child who “wants to do a poo at Paul’s house”. Lucky old Paul. I can’t even remember what the advert is for so it’s not even a very effective, vile advert. Just stomach churning. Thinking about it, maybe it’s for an air freshener. If so they should take the buttock clenching boy round to the family who find it necessary to have an air freshener that goes off every 30 minutes in a variety of scents. Where on earth are these people living? Next to a sewage treatment plant? What kind of smells are they producing (in their living room) which can’t be covered by opening the window or just waiting for it to go away? Perhaps the advert doesn’t show the whole picture, perhaps if the camera pulled back a bit you’d see Granny sitting on an over flowing commode or the entire cast from “All Creatures Great and Small” filming in the corner.

I used to live near a sewage treatment plant and occasionally in the garden you’d get a slight whiff from the poo-ery but never enough to have motion sensitive air fresheners set to detonate at our every step. Weirdly you used to have to pay to take a short cut through it. Slowing down to put your money in the toll was always risky. Once when driving through it, it was particularly pungent and my mum felt moved to shout “Grief Barney, is that you?” he pointed out it was more likely to be the 50,000 tonnes of excretement outside the window.

I honestly didn’t mean to theme this entire article around poo. Apologies for anyone enjoying a snack or a meal. It was meant to be about advertising. Unfortunately all the adverts that annoy me seem to be lavatorial in tone. I don’t really see the point of adverts for toilet paper- it’s not a luxury item. I’ve never seen an advert for andrex or whatever and then rushed out and bought a load.

The weirdest advert at the moment is for a special cream that stops you chafing when you walk. What?!?!?! Surely clothes solve this problem, or I don’t know, not being so fat your skin ruptures when you walk. Or perhaps go out for lunch with women who like to discuss their bowel movements over lunch and keep a handy packet of laxatives in their handbags to recommend to their friends. Lunch with the bulimic brigade. It’s not just astonishing that they are talking about this over lunch it’s that one of the non-speaking one doesn’t look up and go “do you mind? I’m eating here”.

Oh dear, I’m back to poo again.