Funny how advertising can alter the associations of a song forever. The Stylistics’ You Make Me Feel Brand New, a keening tract of close harmony disco schmaltz from 1974, should by rights conjure up images of the last couple dancing on a rapidly-clearing disco floor at the end of the evening, glitter balls going slowly out of focus, lonely men in polo shirts dejectedly draining the last of their lukewarm pint, and other provincial night out cliches of a certain vintage. Instead it stands for a blonde housewife flapping a white cotton sheet around an overlit bedroom, and a baby drooling mashed banana onto its bib. This misattribution is all the fault of Bio-Tex, ‘the only specialist soaker and pre-washer’, and its long-running ad campaign which famously identified, in the forthright manner of the ancient Greek philosophers, the four basic elements of dirt as blood, sweat, gravy and egg. Precisely what reasoning led to the isolation of this seemigly random quartet we’d have loved to know, but no working was ever shown.
Creamguide's Pick of the Day
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The Eurovision Song Contest
Saturday, 20.00, BBC1Jess Cully writes, “Nicki French was certainly our singer the last time the Contest was held in Sweden, but the host city then was Stockholm. The Contest is huge in Sweden and none of its major cities would be allowed to hog the Contest by hosting it twice in a row, hence the choice of Malmo this year. If Sweden wins it again in the near future, expect us to be either back in Stockholm or in Gothenburg.” Indeed, but even though we’ve not enjoyed it quite so much since the Beeb stopped making the scoreboard and got its logo on it every few minutes, we’re still there ready to enjoy the spectacle, and it seems like Graham Norton, for our money probably the best light entertainment presenter on TV at the moment, has been doing this forever.
Blood, sweat, gravy and egg… what a party that was.
Were they the Earth, Wind and Fire tribute band?
There was a shot of a girl in a brown and white striped bra and pants set in this ad which was shown in the early summer of 1987. It started with a close up of her adjusting her pants and then panned to a full length view of her. Is there a vid of this ad anywhere?
Has that television advertisement for Bio-tex with the stylistics been uploaded anywhere (for example – you tube) – if yes where can I find it?
My Mum had a box of Bio-Tex for years, I don’t know if it got used much.
I remember the ads, mostly because the song & grainy footage made it seem like it had come out of a 10 year time warp.