A Thousand Pounds a Puff

BY A. H. BARTON IWAS alone in San Francisco when I read that advertising at popular times on British TV would cost £1,000 a minute. Outside the window a passing trolley-bus pro- claimed that 'It's Work to Drive, Why Drive to Work?' This seemed an artless and reasonable suggestion. 'You, too,' it did not say, 'may join us in our hospital-clean, foyer-carpeted, cathedral-silent, friendlier trolley-bus.' Experience of com- mercial radio advertising makes me think that ITA may not provide the reasonable and artless, and I dread its plans be- cause I know from sound radio that the advertiser will be efficient; however enraging his first impact, he will be capable of leaving me disarmed, my wrath dissolved. I have to fight advertisers, and I have enough troubles as it is—in particular a camomile lawn at present consisting of invisible seedlings five inches apart.

The trolley-bus disappeared from view and the telephone rang. I had never answered an American telephone before and I lifted the receiver gingerly. 'This is Yosemite Elec- tronics,' said a soft and essentially beguiling voice. 'Have you TV?' I was furiously angry; thoughts of invasion of privacy, and of cost of telephonic advertising to the nation, any nation, tumbled in my mind. 'No,' I said, politely. 'I was X-rayed four months ago and my chest is as sound as a bell.'

'If you have not got TV,' the voice continued, 'we think you might be interested in our gentler, more imperceptible instalment terms. We have three fresh styles : the redwood cabinet, the Mexican folk-screen and the nursery white box. Seven out of ten men pull that crack about tuberculosis when I call them.'

I said that my host already had a TV set, and I inquired diffidently whether I might ask a question. The voice said I was welcome to do so.

'Do you sit there all day in your office,' 1 asked, 'telephoning to strangers?'

'Yes. I work right through the book. I have got to T.'

'I know. When you get to the end, will you have to start at the beginning again?' 'That is what I am scared of. I do not think 1 shall be able to stand it.'

'But you do it very nicely.' 'A girl has to live.'

Utterly beguiled by the alert and charming voice and the friendly explanation, I replaced the receiver and sat there gazing down the clean, polished street, at the white, terraced houses and at the monstrous Cadillacs clambering and sliding on the nearly vertical hill. I longed to step out and buy a nursery white box. As this was out of the question, 1 began instead to consider an earlier beguilement. In a Melbourne hospital I had listened every day for an hour at lunch time to Nicky and Graham, whose apparently distasteful duty it was to advertise a miscellany of commodities between-. bouts of record-playing. I loved those two from the start. Their attitude towards the spoken advertisement was clearly mine: GRAHAM : Play a record, Nicky boy, play a record.

NICKY: No. • GRAHAM: First we plug a product, then we play a record, then we plug a product. iWe have just plugged a product and we ought now to play a record.

NICKY: No. I suggest we plug another product, then play a record.

[A long, offhand pause, calculated to pass the time and make the listener suspect a technical hitch.]

GRMIAM : Suppose we plug a product wh'ife we play a record? NICKY: No. The sponsor would not like it.

GRAHAM: You know how much I care what the sponsor thinks.

NICKY: Plug a product, Graham. Plug one.

GRAHAM: Have we any left to plug? We've been working fast.

NICKY: You have one in your hatband there—about chil- dren's toothpaste, as I remember it. Magenta with golden, flecks, each fleck a tiny piece of barley-sugar, the taste the crystal taste of dinkum Aussie sunlight, gum-leaf dappled, fragrant, fragrant, fragrant. Read it out.

GRAHAM : Your version's better: Did you taste the sample? NICKY : Yes. Never any more !

GRAHAM : What did it taste of?

NICKY: Skunk's bedsocks. I must warn my mother against the stuff. She might get it for me. Are you listening, mother? Make a mental note. . . .

Nicky always brought his mother into it, and I believe firmly that she existed and listened regularly. When I left hospital I told people how much I admired the two of them. Who, I asked, would take commercial radio seriously now? I was promptly made to understand how naive 1 was. That reference to bedsocks had rocked every chemist in Victoria and New South Wales back on his heels. Every child from Nowra to Lorne was right there in the nearest shop, holding its pennies out and sniffing for skunk. I bought a tube for myself finally, and it would be here before me as 1 write if I knew where it was.