To continue the gas theme: the Gas Council were certainly busy in 1957, weren't they? What really intrigues me, though, is 'Mr Therm and the Whispering Fish invite you to Fish Week at the Tea Centre, Regent Street, SW1.' Eh?

Regular readers may remember this Amplex advert, where I poo-pooed the idea of taking deodorant pills. Dear reader, I was WRONG, SO WRONG. I honestly can't imagine how an internal deodorant would work, or how it wouldn't wreak havoc inside the body. Also, check out the wording of an advert that was most likely written by men, for a product most likely developed by men...

One thing I noted whilst reading my magazine collection was the sheer number of constipation remedies advertised in them. The fifties magazines were particularly obsessed, which puzzled me at first, until I considered the traditional British diet. Given that the British digestive system used to be faced with so much stodge, it's no wonder men used to take a newspaper to the toilet, and that comedy from the era often contained references to castor oil, a common stimulant of the bowel. A whole nation, desperate for a poo: that's what made Britain great.

I recall a documentary about the 1980s claiming that it was the era of 'adult' ice cream in the UK, what with Haagen Dazs bursting onto the scene with their racy adverts, but, as ever, this was to oversimplify the trend. The development of 'complete sweets' clearly inspired ice-cream manufacturers to ape more complex desserts, and so tap into the more demanding adult market. The organic movement of the '70s may well have inspired the likes of Ben and Jerry's, but it's interesting that there's still a large market for the descendants of the products featured here, for those of us with smaller budgets. After all, the mighty Viennetta's still in UK supermarkets...