I don't usually do this, but I am posting the piece I did on AdScam yesterday about the death of someone I worked with when I first came to the States back in the sixties...
So, I am saddened by the news today that Dick Wilson, the one and only "Mr. Charmin," has finally kicked the bucket. He was 91, and shilling P&G's bum fodder, as we call it in the UK, made him a millionaire. I worked with him in the early sixties, when I first came to America after talking myself into a job at B&B. Charmin had two campaigns at that time before they finally settled on Mr. Whipple after what seemed like eight trillion focus groups and ad testing. The other campaign was "The Shy Salesman." This prize Dufus sold toilet paper door to door, usually tripping on the door mat, so the bathroom tissue... We were forbidden by P&G ever to call it toilet paper!!!... Floated away, because it was full of "Puffs of air softness." That's right folks, that's what we "Mad Men" did all day, when we weren't smoking, drinking and screwing our brains out! Anyway, I hope Dick will be happy sneaking around the aisles of that great golden supermarket in the clouds, making sure the little old ladies don't squeeze the Charmin. He did, by the way, hold the record by umpteen years, for the longest number of years the same actor played the same role in a campaign."
OK, for the first twenty years of my career, I was too embarrassed to let on that I had been part of this stuff, but having since since done a lot of stuff I'm proud of, I now take a perverse pleasure in it. It's not the ten million pounds Guinness, "Cog" rip off, but it sold a lot of toilet rolls... Ooops, sorry, "Bathroom Tissue!"
George Parker
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