I’m always on the lookout for those twin terrors – Harry Hyperbole and Percy Platitude, playground bullies in the School of Dismal Copywriting – and my vigilance yesterday wasn’t in vain. At the time, I was agonising over the best way to burn some good Scottish fivers (not easily done, as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried), working my way diligently through the collection of fireworks leaflets I’d picked up on my recent store-surveying travels. As with most things major multiple, I was finding it hard to spot the difference between their offerings, but one particular claim caught my eye.
It was in a section of extraordinary cake-like explosives called barrages – more Beirut than back garden - “Fantastic value for money with 1000 shots.” Immediately the dreaded platitude-cum-hyperbole f-word put me on my guard, and prompted me to calculate – based on their advertised time durations – that some of these munitions shake the neighbours from their beds at a rate of £75 a minute! That’s £4,500 an hour – comfortably more than Shevchenko earns.
Now, call me old fashioned, but… “fantastic” value for money?
