ADWATCH - No 29

I see our old friend 'salon shampoo' is back. Not that it ever went away. It's been amusing me for years.
This time it's Messrs TRESemmé® who are running TV commercials for 'salon quality' shampoos.

Now your average hairdresser will use the cheapest shampoo they can get away with. It's called the profit motive. It's called capitalism.
In the town where I grew up there was a plain-fronted shop that could have been a sex shop or massage parlour. In fact, it supplied wholesale products to the hairdressing trade.
The 'Jean-Pierres' and 'Marcos' (aka 'Reg' and 'Trevor') would pull up outside and walk in carrying those plastic petrol containers you keep in the boot for emergencies and emerge with them filled with several litres of 'salon shampoo'. For all I know, the stuff was dispensed from pumps labelled 1-Star, 2-Star and 3-Star.
Call me cynical, but the possibility that the stuff was enriched with vitamins, extracts of hazelnut and sunflower, and prepared by white-coated coves in a Parisian laboratoire seems rather remote.
If you were Messrs TRESemmé or Garnier and credited women with an ounce of common sense, you would surely tell them that it was not 'salon shampoo' but something far superior.



Incidentally, my researches for yesterday's piece (we don't just dash these things off, you know. Sometimes we spend, ooh, all of 30 seconds on Google) revealed that Stelios has a brand called easy4men. I've known people for whom that was their middle name. I wondered if, given that Stelios's fellow airline owner, Richard Branson, owns Heaven nightclub, Stelios had also decided to diversify into some branch of the gay market. But it turned out that easy4men is a brand of male toiletries. In bright orange packaging, naturally. (Surely people would think you'd nicked them from one of his aircraft or cruise ships?).

Nothing gay about the big fellow's toiletries though. They are aimed at "the no-nonsense man" and satisfy "the basic male grooming needs of the man who is happy with who he is."
Now call me cynical yet again, but I would venture that the basic grooming ritual of the no-nonsense male is to pick the toast crumbs out of his pubes and throw some water over his face using his cupped hands. If he's on a promise he might also take what Australians call a 'British shower' - spray a load of deodorant into the air and then run through the ensuing mist wearing only your chuddies.

Would the 'no-nonsense man', even if he's a male scrubber, really use easy4men's 'exfoliating scrub bar'?
Would he really carry in his pocket a packet of very girlie 'deep cleaning wipes'?
And for those nights camped out at Luton Airport because your easyJet flight was cancelled, you can buy several of the products as a Travel Kit in a neat little black toiletry case.

'Oi, Stelios! Are you taking the fucking piss? Do I look like one of your fucking air stewards? You can stick your scrub bar up your easyHole. Dot Co Dot fucking UK.'

PLEASE NOTE: In view of comments received (assuming they are genuine), I am happy to make it clear that nothing in the above post should be construed as making any implications about the sexuality of Mr Stelios Haji-Ioannou.
This was a light-hearted piece based on the likely reaction of a certain type of homophobic male to the concept of male cosmetics. It does not contain any comment or speculation about Mr Haji-Ioannou's own sexuality and I was unaware that this had ever been the subject of speculation or "smears".
Despite not having made any comments about Mr Haji-Ioannou's sexuality, I wish to make it clear that anyone who inferred that I had done so (including Mr Haji-Ioannou) would be mistaken.