Even Nasals Will Fall

There is an advert currently on TV for a deodorant called Lynx Excite. It features a number of angels tumbling to earth, then making their way zombie-like towards a man who has just sprayed himself with Lynx. As they surround him the most beautiful and sultry of them rips off her halo and smashes it on the ground and the rest of them follow suit, clearly willing to forsake all the joys of heaven and abandon themselves to this very essence of essence. The tagline of the ad is “Even Angels Will Fall”.

The Angel Gabriel is not among those who fall in the ad, nor indeed is Lucifer (surely the very definition of a fallen angel) as this would not attract the demographic that Lynx are aiming at. They are aiming at adolescent males desperate to get off with girls and willing to believe that a sharp-smelling deodorant is all that they need to enter a world of nookie bliss. Unfortunately the word “sharp-smelling” above was not used lightly, which renders this unlikely.

I was not sure if my readers would be familiar with the product that I am talking about, but Googling extensive research tells me that it is marketed in the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and China (a big hello to my Chinese readers, by the way), while it is known as Axe in other countries. I hope therefore that most of you know of the astonishingly acrid product of which I speak.

The Lynx Excite scent is created by peeling an onion, caramelising horse-manure, grinding a packet of pepper-and-garlic flavoured crisps, roasting a stoat over an open fire and then liquidising the whole lot in a blender. To this is added wasp-repellent, shark-repellent and Marmite and the whole lot is pumped into a canister slightly too small for it.

When used the contents shoot out in a jet so fast that, if you were to light it as a merry jape, you would be propelled backwards through a wall, leaving a cartoon-like starfish-shaped hole. The scent then surrounds the user in an almost visible haze, leaving a comet-trail of pungent aroma behind him which has an afterlife of days.

The Excite is just the latest of a long line of Lynx deodorants. There was Lynx Sandal, in which the onion was replaced by a footballer’s sock; Lynx Marine, in which the crisps were replaced by a week-old flounder; and Lynx Africa, in which the stoat was replaced by a lynx.

One cold evening I had the task of driving Tinson2 and two of his friends to a disco in Ashford, a town about ten miles away. Being trapped in a car with three different strains of Lynx could be described as an eye-opening experience, except that that it exactly what it wasn’t.

I thankfully have never been tear-gassed, but I think that I know now what it feels like.

Sign Here

There is a programme on Channel 4 called “Hollyoaks” which has been running for as long as rivers and about which I know absolutely nothing. I have at least have some idea about other long-running soaps such as EastEnders and Coronation Street, if only from the front covers of magazines with names like “Soap Weekly”, or from listening to other people talking. For example everyone, whether a fan or not, knew that a train was going to come off a railway bridge and crash into the pub on Coronation Street weeks before it happened, and indeed we all watched it, it was great fun if you didn’t know or care about any of the characters.

But you never hear anyone say “Like, O!M!G!, did you see Hollyoaks last night!” and the front cover of “Soap Weekly” never has a headline like “Hollyoaks shock! Sharon having Dave’s baby!” (knowing my luck they are the names of two actual characters and none of you will now believe that I never watch it).

Anyway, on Sunday morning I put on the TV. Someone had obviously been watching Channel 4 last thing the night before, so two young people appeared on the screen, with a tiny girl (or a normal sized girl and some digital technology) appearing in the bottom right corner, relaying the dialogue in sign language. I pressed the info button see what the programme was and it was “The Hollyoaks Omnibus”, all the episodes of the week shown in one go (if you have TV dinners, do you have to eat seven of them while you’re watching?) .

Anyway, the couple (possibly Sharon and Dave) spoke for a while, the girl signed what they were saying, then they started to kiss. This went on for quite a while, it seems there is a lot of snogging on the Hollywood omnibus, though not as much as there is on the last Greystones omnibus to leave Dublin on a Saturday night, nor is there as much smoking upstairs.

During the kissing, as you can see, the girl just stared expressionlessly at the couple. I started to feel sorry for her, she looks like she’s playing gooseberry to the Fee-Fi-Fo Giant and Mrs Giant. But where else could she look or what else could she do? I’m sure there were smoochy slurpy noises she could have mimed, or the occasional sigh, but perhaps there is no sign language for this kind of sound.

If I were her I’d have done that thing where you turn your back, put your arms over your own shoulders and appear to be kissing someone.

That’s why I don’t get jobs like hers.