Before Billy Connolly became a sort of eccentric British travel ambassador you may recall he was a stand-up comic - possibly the best in the country at his peak.
I always remember a routine he did, after seeing a new product advertised, about shampoo which contained jojoba.
"Ho-ho-ba? What the f*** is ho-ho-ba?" he exclaimed before going off on one of his legendary rants.
I recalled this routine just this morning while taking my shower, as my wife has purchased a shower gel containing 'essential oils' of patchouli and ylang ylang.
I tried to imagine that wonderful Glaswegian accent yelling "Ylang ylang? What the f*** is ylang ylang..."
It wasn't easy, for while I have an MP3-style memory for accents with snippets that lodge in my brain, it's much harder to imagine the originator saying something which I don't even know how to pronounce.
But what struck me more than anything is how much of a nanny state we now live in. Even our shampoos and shower gel tell us now how some of its constituent parts are 'essential'.
Well I'm sorry, I might just want to live life on the edge. I might want to be non-conformist. What I want in my shampoo is non-essential oils, so I can get the thrill of risking my follicles: say, rapeseed oil, or maybe Castrol GTX.
Let's face it, what are the chances of me turning to my loved ones on my death bed and saying: "My one regret in life is that I didn't put more ylang ylang oil in my hair ..."
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