Hard stools and ‘Sex in the City’

I’ve made a New Year resolution!

From now on I’m going to adopt a more mature attitude when blogging, so…

Let’s talk about POO!

In between the usual Christmas dross on TV, ad breaks seemed to feature a lot of adverts for patent medicines – it was as if the entire nation was suffering from colds, flu, indigestion, trapped wind and hard stools.

Now, I don’t know about you, but at Christmas I tend to eat a lot more meat, lots of things like chocolates and nuts that I’m maybe not used to in such quantity, I drink more alcohol and consume far less roughage and water than usual.

The result – and let’s not be coy here – is that I go from being a ‘one good dump a day’ chap to maybe three times a day and with products of varying quality. Sometimes it’s too easy and at others a tad more difficult. Sometimes I get the shits and sometimes it’s sheep droppings time.

Those ‘difficult’ sheep shit times are hard stool moments.

I really couldn’t give a shit (see what I did there?) though, as I know that a return to a normal diet will restore me to ‘one good dump a day’ normality.

But the peddlars of patent medicines are wise to this. They know that people are going to be having a difficult time shitting at Christmas, so they put ads like this on:

It’s ‘Sex in the City’ with bowel movement gossip:

“When I went to the loo…bowel ‘stuff’…it was hard and really uncomfortable again…”

All this said with a look of acute embarrassment…

…and hushed tones that indicate some dreadful sexual and moral transgression – meaningless sex with disabled Great Danes whilst burning polar bears, possibly? – rather than a bit of a strain whilst on the cludge after three days of over-indulgence.

Her blond friend – I’m guessing she’s the Kim Cattrall figure in this low-rent production – says “You need…” which always makes me want to shout out, “A good shit!“, which I sometimes do when I’m feeling easily amused, which I often am.

But then ‘Kim’ whips out the DulcoEase which:

works by softening your stools. Each capsule contains 100mg docusate sodium. This acts to increase the amount of water and salts absorbed by your stool by decreasing your stool’s surface tension – making it softer and more comfortable to go to the loo.

However, on a more serious note, how the fuck is Ms ‘Coy’ going to be able to cope with finding blood in her stools? That’s really going to freak her out and what could be just a minor nick in the rectum, but could be a sign that something more serious is going on – like bowel cancer, all gets ignored.

Well, just maybe this advert could help if it makes a group of people chat about their shitting problems over lunch. Maybe one of them will come out with something that inspires one of her friends to suggest she sees a doctor.

But is all this crap (see what I did there?) really likely to happen?

Do people really discuss their bowel movements over lunch?

I very much doubt it.