Maybe it’s an age thing. Let’s be clear: I have nothing against bodily functions. They play a very positive role in my good health, but if you’ll pardon the thought, does it have to be so much in-your-face these days?
There’s the current and ludicrous president of the US announcing urbi et orbi last month that the nations of the Earth were queuing up to kiss his “ass”. Coarse, and typical.
When watching the 9pm news, do I really need to hear middle-aged women discuss their “gush” and “whoosh” as they tell us of their involuntarily leaks – right, left, and centre – leaving even that dog Piddlin’ Pete in awe?
In a break from the latest calamity in Gaza, do I need to be told that “Always Discreet” leakage pads console women who say: “It’s releasing my pee I’m worried about”?
Dara Ó Briain: ‘I’m a man, I can’t manage family at the best of times ... now I’ve willingly taken on a 600% increase in family members’
Wills and family fall-outs: ‘Money and grief bring out the worst in people’
Manchán Magan: The deeper you dive into Icelandic culture, the more of Ireland you find
Domhnall Gleeson on nepo babies: ‘I’ve been so lucky. It’s important you can acknowledge it. Otherwise you’re lying to yourself’
Should we be interrupted from news of the latest Trump-induced mayhem to be told, dramatically, “Beware the Poonami”, with horror movie music and curtains billowing over a child’s cradle in a darkened room.
That clip, from a TV advert for Pampers, includes a slumbering child doing his/her business as terror-stricken parents writhe in a nearby bed at the thought of their baby doing what babies do, a frightened dog peering from beneath them. Still, salvation is at hand. With Pampers, “you’ll never fear a Poonami again.” Pass the Trump vomit bucket, please!
Then, as if it couldn’t get worse, along comes Andrex. Now I like Andrex adverts with their fluffy dogs doing fluffy dog stuff. Not any more. This latest one opens with a loud fart and the challenging title “get comfortable, first office poo”. Really?
It involves another middle-aged woman, sitting uncomfortably at her desk in a darkened office with obligatory fluffy pup beneath. She rises, takes a large Andrex roll from a shelf, walks the gauntlet of her office, colleagues gazing as though she’s headed for a gallows.
She picks up a large French-German dictionary (what, exactly, is she planning to do in the little girls’ room?) before entering that holy of holies as silent colleagues, now standing in awe, stare! Can we get back to Ukraine, please?
Even the weather?
Scatology, from the Greek skat for excrement, plus logia, for study of ...
