The latest Andrex advert is a life-changing masterpiece

The Guardian

2 days ago

If the latest Andrex TV advert had come along 50 years ago, it would have changed my life. It would have made my schooldays more enjoyable and might even have helped me to perform better academically. Honestly, I think it's a gamechanger.
It begins, unpromisingly, with a schoolboy breaking wind in class. What puerile nonsense is this, I thought. Another boy turns to look at him and sniffs derisively. So far, so daft. But then up pops a killer statistic: 76% of kids hold their poo at school. And all of a sudden we're into public information film territory and I am transported back half a century to Hagley primary school where, between the ages of five and nine, I was definitely among the 76% of poo-holders. Middle school, too. Hell, even high school probably. I doubt I, er, went on school premises more than half a dozen times, all in. This can't have done me much good.
As I've (over) shared before, at my school going into a cubicle to do what had to be done became a big deal. Word would go around the playground that some poor lad's fear and shame had been trumped by the urgency of his need to go, and there would be a rush to the boys' bogs to make it a spectator event. I have no idea what this was all about, or whether it happened anywhere else. As with most bad things, I suspect it was a boy thing, as girls always used cubicles anyway, so for them there was no great fuss.
I say it again – if only this advert had come along back then. What happens is that the Andrex puppy appears in this kid's classroom. It looks up at the lad and gives him the nod. The lad nods back, stands up, parps once more and, toilet roll in hand, proceeds in triumph to the lav. In the nodding of a dog, all his shame has evaporated more quickly than any smell he generated. As he makes his way to where he's going, the kids salute this miracle of reframing by banging their desks and cheering. Someone fist-bumps him. And then he's in there, closing the door behind him, at which point, like a choir of angels, the whole school intones the word 'poo' in harmony.
There's so much to unpick here. I've always bemoaned the absurdity of advertising something as impossibly mundane as toilet tissue. I mean, puppies running around unravelling the stuff and so on. Drivel. But now they've come up with this work of genius. In scraping the bottom of the barrel in search of something, anything, new to say about bog paper, they've found gold down there.
It's telling that I only came across this masterpiece by accident as I mistimed some fast-forwarding trying to dodge an ad break on Sky Max. Does anyone watch TV ads any more? They can't do, or I'm sure this one, given the subject matter, would have caused a bit of a sensation. Unless, of course, it's just me. I must say that, as I rolled about laughing in delight at it, my family did look at me with more concern than usual.
I'm now wondering what else I've been missing. What other works of advertising art have I fast-forwarded past? Just as if I've come across some music I love for the first time and now have to listen to everything that artist's ever done, I've started on Andrex's back catalogue. And, to my delight, there's one just as good from last year tackling the taboo of the office poo, with a subplot concerning the taking of reading matter in with you.
Please tell me there's a box set of these things somewhere, with bonus features, outtakes, director's commentary and so on. And until further notice, I'll be buying no other brand of toilet tissue. It's the least I can do to show my appreciation.
Adrian Chiles is a Guardian columnist
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