Colm O'Regan: Jingles jangle in our brains, let's create more of them

“Poxy chores”. When you read that, there’s a strong chance you’ve lowered your chin, put on a Dublin accent and started singing like Ronnie Drew. You may even poked a brush at the ceiling.

When Monica rang Liveline last week to complain about a puppet canary, that looked like Ronnie Drew, who was warning people to check their ceiling monitors once a month, she wasn’t the first. 

‘Bridie’ rang the programme in 2014 complaining about the original version. Without even looking that ad up, I know it has the lyric, “and if you don’t believe me, ask me dear Uncle Pat”.

The big story from this is not the use of the word poxy. Although I do feel for Monica. If poxy offends her, wait till she hears what Cardi B does with p-words.

No, the most noteworthy thing is people who responded saying they sing the song. And those ads don’t come along all the time. The ad which had so seeped into your brain you were singing it. If you stopped a stranger of a certain age in the street and, while respecting their personal space, sang “Who… tells the sun to rise?” they might respond with “Now Pat is on his wayyyy.”

If you hear Desmond Dekker and the Aces singing The Israelites, you might be transported away to Jamaica of the 1960s where, according to Wikipedia, “Rastafarians were largely marginalized as "cultish" and ostracized from the larger society, including by the more conservative Christian church in Kingston.”

Or you might be thinking of the family dancing around their sitting room because they’re so excited about the ESB’s ‘Woa-oaaah The Night Saver’ deal for cheap current. 

I’ll never forget that ad, not just for the song but because of the opulence of the house. It didn’t take much opulence to get me drooling in 1984. They had a dishwasher but never mind that. They had heat you could control and a shower. And clothes that were dry straight away and didn’t need to be put in the hot press for two days.

The eighties seem to have been a golden age for jingles. Long before fast fashion, Penneys had a whole lot of things for Christmas.

Forty-one years later, Shake and Vac is the still most obvious one. “When your carpet smells fresh, your room does too”, is practically a seanfhocail at this stage. But do you remember the version Jedward did in 2010? Probably not. It was the choon from the original that stuck in your head.

Sometimes the ad coincides with a time in your life. I was FIERCE proud when I started helping my father do wallpapering. So "Superfresco Goes Up Easy It’s by Graham and Brown", have me in their pocket forever. Although I refuse to believe "What goes up must come down". My experience of stripping wallpaper suggests that’s a damned lie. Admittedly we never bought Superfresco. One simply didn't just buy brands in the 1980s. I might do so now. If I "HURRY ON DOWN TO BARGAINTOWN". And when the wall is done, it’s time to sort out the floor with "DES KELLY THE CARPET MANNNN…"

As Tommy Canary takes up roosts in my brain, he’ll find very few ads of his own age. Either they’re not making catchy tunes or I’m not seeing them. All I see now are Youtube Skip Ads >| that promise to streamline how I do business on Monday.com. Or the clicky-clack voices on Grammarly who are DELIGHTED with the state of their emails now. Or another fecking masterclass.

So, advertisers, while things are grim for the music industry, why not pay a few artists to make a few more tunes. Yiz poxes.