Cutting Up Smooth
CONSUMING INTEREST
By LESLIE ADRIAN
CLEAN-SHAVEN misers will be sorry to hear that Boots (the cash chemists in an age of credit) no longer stock Lillicrap's Hone, that venerable piece of machined glass on which old-fashioned rust-prone razor blades could be stropped back to near- sharpness. No call for them nowadays, they told me in London, yet no more than five years ago I reminded grateful readers of this Is. 9d. money- saver, and even posted off a few around the country to prove a point. Meanwhile, shavers, young and old, have become affluent enough to affect the luxury of the stainless-steel blade, attracted no doubt by its rarity when Wilkinson were on their own (using, as people never seem to tire of hearing, a Gillette patent).
The great Gillette (the founder's name was King, don't forget), having let their lead in a semi-luxury market slip to the Randolph family's edge-tool firm, came back with a crash with Silver Gillette and have now decided to cut the blade market up even further with Aristocrat, Is. each, mirror-finished and limitlessly rust- proof. according to the blurb.
Which?, whose August issue contains an analysis of the cost of shaving with ten of the best-known makes, went to press without test- ing Aristocrat, but they did find Super Silver one of three Best Buys (wouldn't Better Buys be better?) at 2s. I Id. for five. They are supposed to cost 3s. 6d., but the abolition of resale price maintenance has brought down prices in most shops. No doubt some will be selling the Aristocrat at cut prices, too. What will Wilkinson do next, I wonder? The battle has been raging for at least two years, since the summer of 1964 when Gillette abandoned fixed pricing as a policy and the Financial Times launched what seemed to be a regular report on cutting the price of whisker-cutting under titles like 'Cut and Thrust in Razor Blades; 'Cut-throat Corn- petition in Stainless Blades' and 'Cut-and-Thrust in the Razor Blade Stakes,' all in the space of eighteen months. The net result for the consumer has been to raise quality and lower prices, for which I am sorry to say there is no Queen's Award.
But perhaps the oddest aspect of all is that the number of good, smooth shaves that can be obtained from a blade seems to have reached a limit. Which? puts it at between five and thirteen for the Super Silver, five and eleven for the Wilkinson Super Sword. Edge and from four to nine or ten for the other three main contenders, 7 O'Clock Stainless, Schick Krona Plus and Personna Super. (Like premium petrols, all blades are now Super, even Woolworth's Super Double Life.) The blades need less care than the old non-stainless (in fact, you mustn't wipe them for fear of harming their delicate edges), but, depending on skin and beard, they have no charmed and endless life. After one or two feather-light shaves,, even the great Aristocrat begins to feel like a razor blade. The everlasting blade is as far off as ever, it seems, which is no bad thing for the manufacturers.
But they have brought down the cost to the customer with their higher quality, if Which? is right about the annual outlay on 'satisfactory' shaves : from 13s. to 33s. with Super Silver (eight to nineteen shaves a blade), I Is. to 28s. with 7 O'Clock Stainless (seven to sixteen shaves), and 24s. to 60s. with Blue Gillette Extra (two to six shaves and not stainless steel). All three come off the same production line. I guess it all hangs on what is meant by 'satisfactory.' I learn that a lot of electric-shaver addicts have been taking to water and warm steel again to avoid' what Gillette apostrophised as 'five' o'clock shadow' more than a generation• ago, and the old firm themselves have steadfastly refused to get mixed up in the dry-shaving business, almost as if it were really not clean enough for them. Now, with prices tumbling, it looks as if they have won a round in the battle of the blades.
Raymond Postgate, who retires from the editorship of the Good Food Guide this month, I understand, has been awarded a bronze medal at Epernay by the veteran vineyard workers of Champagne. When one remembers his outspoken evidence in the hearings over Spanish 'cham- pagne' and his lawsuit with Showerings over 'champagne' perry, it surprises me that they didn't make it a gold one.
* No matter what is said and done, the patent- medicine caper continues unabated. Last month's She contained a whole-page advertisement for a bust developer (really a cosmetic, I suppose). The Advertising Standards Authority says: 'All preparations and devices claiming to promote enlargement of the bust are likely to be either ineffective or harmful, and the advertising for them should be regarded as unacceptable.'
A read through a new book, The Drugs You Take (Hutchinson, 30s.), by Dr S. Bradshaw, suggests that this kind of refusal could be further extended. The pity of it is that the laws of libel seem to have prevented Dr Bradshaw from naming names, even though the claims made for remedies for dandruff, BO, bad breath, 'liverishness,' piles, and especially colds, are so much rubbish.
'The evidence for Vitamin C is far from con- vincing . . .'; 'It is a sad irony that newspapers in this country carry advertisements for cigarettes and for medicines to relieve the coughs that cigarettes cause . . .'; 'probably the chief use of antiseptics in the home, and especially of disinfectants, is to make housewives feel more secure and less guilty ...'; 'the majority of man- kind still believe that the more ingredients there are in a medicine the better it must be.' Yet Dr -Bradshaw would like to see the patent-medicine business continue under stiffer controls. A good
• start would be a medical Bradshaw that told the simple truth about proprietary drugs by name and formula.
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