My life changed when Peter Cook and Dudley Moore invented shower gel. It was nineteen seventy-something and they introduced the ‘green bat’ hanging in the bathroom. And why was it special? Why was it so revolutionary? Because it hung upside down. Like a bat. So it didn’t need a shelf, it didn’t need a receptacle, it just hung there. Magically inert and not spilling its contents. Until needed, then a little squeeze and suds would ensue. Seventies dudes no longer had to spend half an hour chasing a slippery wet bar of soap around the shower as it flew out of their hand time and time again. I was cleaner, I was happier. I was earlier for school/work.

And 40-odd years on, I still buy Radox Shower Gel. Of course, its no longer just ‘green’ but comes in the obligatory ‘tea-tree and chamomile’ flavour, it comes in ‘rose-petal and aardvark’ flavour, ‘sea mist and global warming’ and a whole host of other chemical additives, most of which are probably carcinogenic but smell nice.

Then something happened!!!!

Slimage in the bath. Blue puddles on the shower floor. Hmmmmm. I needed to actually close the lid. Like I remember that. WTF???

I wrote to them. Thinking ‘bad batch’. But no. They’ve changed the ‘valve’. Which was always a horrible little plastic ‘sphincter’ thingy which stopped leakage but allowed squeezage. And they’ve replaced it with… a hole. Just a hole. No valve, no cleverness, no fucking thought, just… a hole. Through which, unsurprisingly, the stuff just pours out. Constantly. And why?

Because the great god that is Climate Change must be appeased. And the old ‘valves’ weren’t recyclable and the new ones are. So Unilever/Radox can tick that box and act smug. Whilst I get Mel shouting everY morning and night that ‘YOU LEFT THE LID OFF THE SHOWER GEL AGAIN!!!!’

You’d think that Radox might print a warning on the bottle. After 40 fucking years. That, even though we provide an integrated hook from which to hang this, it will spew out all over everything if you choose to deploy it.

So I’m starting a new campaign, looking for signatures, if you please:

BRING BACK OUR SHOWER GEL SPHINCTERS AND FUCK CLIMATE CHANGE.

Just a thought. Radox and I are currently in negotiation.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx