Why I fast-forward through the TV programmes to get to the ads

MOTHERS are fighting in toyshops over dolls fashioned after characters from a movie named Frozen. This is to satisfy their children this Christmas.

Why I fast-forward through the TV programmes to get to the ads

If I had a few bob to invest on next year’s must-have toy, I’d set up a factory to make Tommy McAnairy dolls. He’s the character in the ad warning you to get your carbon monoxide alarm, because, as he grimly ends the commercial, if you don’t, you may die.

I am nuts about Tommy, partly because he isn’t slender and ethereal, the way canaries are supposed to be. Tommy is thuggish, with a thick neck on him and sticky-up feathers on the top of his head, like a prominent politician who shall be nameless, because you never know where the appearance of thuggery ends and the reality begins. Tommy plays the banjo and sings while sitting on a bar stool, and his uncle, or maybe it was his grandfather, went down the mines, and keeled over, as any well-trained canary does when the ambient air gets low on oxygen. Once your pet canary turned its little claws up, at the bottom of the cage, you, as a miner, knew to get the hell out of there, fast, before you suffocated (or were shafted, if you’ll pardon the pun).

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