Saturday, January 14, 2006

2006 Lemon fascination

New year's here and, well, basically I've been putting lemon in my water -- watch me cut to the chase.

Apparently it's good for you. I drink quite a bit of water, sometimes fizzy, sometimes not, sometimtes with apple juice in it ... but now I put lemon in it. I think i tmight do stuff, stuff for kidneys or liver or something. That's the basic handle I've got on it. Vitamin C tho, yar?

On googling for lemon I discovered that Americans have something called Lemon Law. It initially intrigued me but clicking around further I discovered it's actually something to do with car quality.

Yes, as you can see, I've resolved to be mmore fascinating in 2006.

Started thinking about the Elder Lemon, didn't I. He featured in a TV commercial in the early 80s for Lemsip.

Pictture a whole village full of lemons with arms and legs. Quite cute looking, as far as lemons can be cute. One of the junior lemons gets ill, snuffly, parents look over him concerned. So, what happens next?

The mandarins of the lemon village (arf) get together and one of them - known as the Elder Lemon - basically sacrifices himself to save the young lemon.

WE next see the young snuffler being given a drink of hot lemon ... made from the elder lemon. Yes, a junior cannibal if you like. Mildly disturbing to my mind.

The last scene of the ad is back to the village scene with healthy junior lemon in it ... plus a big statue commemorating the sacrifice of the Elder lemon.

No one else seems to remember this commercial. Yes I do live in a bubble. If we're still saying happy new year then, yeah, have one ...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The issues raised here are partially addressed in the book Cannibalism: Ecology and Evolution Among Diverse Taxa, by M.A. Elgar and B.J. Crespi (editors), Oxford University Press, 1992. On page 361 the text gets right to the nub of the matter: "Cannibalism is a particularly antisocial form of behaviour."

with acknowledgements to the Weblog of the Ignobel Prizes.

BloggingMone said...

Comemercials can be pretty cruel somtimes. At the moment there is one on TV showing vegetables dancing around because they cannot wait to deep freeze themselves. That's beyond me, to be honest.
If you like lemons in water, then how about the "some like it hot" variant of it? Hot water (not boiling, because of the vitamin C), lemon and honey. It'll keep cough and a sore throat away.

Damon said...

Readers of this blog. We have clearly stumbled upon something very wrong, something very cannabilistic, and something very vegetably.

This is a subject I will ponder and get back to.

The world shouldn't have to be this way.

Dexter said...

Elder Lemons will be burned into my memory for ever! My mate Simon saying to a copper just after they had started wearing Hi-Viz jackets,

"I'm not telling you my name, you're just an elder lemon".

Oh how I didn't laugh when they let us both out in the morning.