Healthy interest in Shit adverts

What is the deal with the health adverts doing the rounds at the moment? Wow, how ‘observational comedy from the late ‘80s’ was that opening gambit? There are two that spring to mind. First up is the one about getting a blood test to check you haven’t got hepatitis. The voiceover is words to the effect of “Have you ever had one too many and sent a text to an ex-girlfriend? [Audience does an internal half-smile, and shakes head at past indiscretions] Have you ever phoned in sick when you’ve had a hangover and can’t face work? [Audience “wow yeah I can’t believe how this advert is speaking directly to me, highlighting not one, but, two things I have done in my life. Very unique things too that surely only a select handful of people have done, what could this mystery voice say next? Have I ever really enjoyed having a wee after needing one for ages?] Have you ever been at a party and injected drugs with a shared needle? [Yeah there was that one time I held a wee in for a 45 minute bus ride...what the?? No I fucking haven’t. I’m not Sid Vicious.]

I’m not ignorant to two things here (1) there are people alive who, though aren’t Sid Vicious, lived through a time when sharing needles of heroin at parties was more socially acceptable (like racism and hitting women), and (2) those people might want to get checked up. But really, how many people lived through that lifestyle and have gone through their life not considering getting a check-up, or more likely being forced to have one. Or dying of AIDS. (Like Mark Fowler. I just mean an AIDS death. He got good AIDS through sex with a WOMAN, who herself had got it from a blood transfusion. Didn’t stop people stopping buying fruit and veg from him when they found out though did it? Probably the same people who didn’t stop drinking in The Dagmar when they found out Wilmot Brown had (been accused of having) raped Kathy Beale. He did do a ‘buy two glasses of wine, get the bottle’ offer though.) Where was I? Oh yeah. I think people who needed such a blood test have probably had one. But what do I know? Apart from not to share needles with people at parties when injecting drugs. I carry fresh needles to input heroin and I don’t share, as you ask.

Taking into account that the advert might have a very small target audience (and one might guess a shrinking one), it was the leap in levels of the questions which struck me more than anything. Bit of a double-take. Do you like drinking water when you’re thirsty? Do you like being entertained in an enjoyable way? Would you gang rape a boy to fit in? I like the thought that some re-formed punk (as opposed to re-formed punk band) has to hear this advert to think “maybe I should get checked out. Now that I’m married and have two kids. It would be a crying shame if I’d infected the three people I love more than anything in the world, even smack. It would be somehow ironic that my recklessness with drugs was equally to blame as my recklessness in not getting tested for these potentially deadly diseases. I’ll book a test tomorrow, just after I take this methadone.”

In a similar act of being overtly obvious are the new adverts for recognising having a stroke. Are there people out there who wouldn’t recognise something a bit odd about someone having pain in the left side of their body, half of their face being paralysed? Maybe it’s a generational thing that this is obvious. Maybe it’s just me and my piers to whom this screams ‘sounds like they’re having the old strokey-woke there’. Perhaps there are people listening to the radio as their granddad grips at his chest with half his face suddenly collapsing going “granddad what up? What’s up?” [it helps if you imagine this as a young cockney lad, I don’t know why. It just does]. Then on hearing this add are like “fack (he’s a cockney remember) saarnds like you’re having a knock-knock joke I’d best dial pearls to swine – pearls to swine –pearls to swine etc”. Though, I think if we live in the country that needs to tell people that if someone goes numb down one side of the body and has a paralysed face they might want to direct said person in the direction of the medical services then we probably live in country where a radio and TV advertising campaign wont solve the problem. Perhaps they should just get a brain-dead talentless celebrity to die of a stroke and create a massive over the top fuss about strokes. I suggest Jodie Marsh.
                     Do you remember when this was how you did a new paragraph? When did that change to a line gap?