Nurofen

For months now there've been loads of Christmas adverts, but a recent addition of a traditional seasonal advertiser has sneaked in, and although on the surface it might not appear so, it is as Christmas an advert as Kerry Katona cracking a sub-cracker level joke about frozen birds.

The beauty of the Nurofen advert (for I think it is they) is that it is trying to advertise against what its biggest selling point is. In their advert they have a man sawing logs, with infra-red showing the pain he is feeling in his arm. Significant red areas demonstrate that a woman is experience burning agony in her lower back as she lifts heavy bags into the back of her saloon car. The solution is to take Nurofen. Job done.

Thing is, the significant jump in sales of painkillers has nothing to do with the fact that we are carrying more shopping or, er, chopping more wood (I think this was the most seasonal thing that the advertisers could come up with that men might do that would cause them pain.)

Ha, good try. The reason we buy a load Nurofen, ibroprofen, paracetamol, asprin, Anadin and Alka Seltzer, put them in a blender with half a pint of egg nog and knock it back in one is because we are hungover. We are hurting due to our own lack of self-control. We are experiencing the kind of head-splitting pain that can only result from 4 parts excessive alcohol, 2 parts over eating and 3 parts excruciating half-memory involving one of your shoes, a kebab, the neighbour's letterbox and the cry "Now to put the turkey in the oven".

I know it. You know it. Even educated fleas know it. And some of them aren't even that smart. But Nurofen continue this charade. And who can blame them? They are a serious, grown-up painkiller. They don't want to admit their principle users are the weak of will, the sunken-eyed indulgist, the sod-headed office oaf. And we don't want to admit it either. Everyone is happy.