Andrex on a roll until we stopped feeling so flush

A press release trumpeting the relaunch of Andrex with Aloe Vera (as Andrex enriched with Aloe Vera, which has a much nicer ring, don’t you think?) inadvertently reveals to the Diary what a bunch of misery guts the British really are.

After ploughing through a load of crap along the lines of “Consumers are looking for a product that understands and cares for their skin and looks good,” the Diary skidded to a halt at a couple of graphs showing the product’s market share over past year. Through the second half of 2004, Andrex with Aloe Vera’s “share of bowl” rose from about nine per cent to 12.1 per cent.

But a close-up graph of December sales suggests that, while consumers were going through the motions of buying presents and having relatives round, they were downgrading their lav-paper purchases.

More humbuggers than bum-huggers, the great British public showed they were too tight to waste Andrex Aloe Vera on Grandma, Auntie Doreen and cousin Russell, and market share crashed, bottoming out at 10.26 per cent. What a load of tight arses.