Soft Like Velvet Soft?

This morning I woke up with terrible indigestion caused by my worrying about the show. Being the main star (my name does come first), I take more of the responsibility when things go wrong. Recently, I’ve become concerned about the quality of ads we’ve been showing in the breaks. I’ve even begun to tape all the shows so I can watch them later in the day and find out what goes on in the breaks.

On Friday night, I wasn’t happy to see that I’d turned and smiled to camera, said 'see you after the break', and then they'd cut to an ad for stool softener. It’s not easy to admit that there has been a gap in my knowledge but I never knew stool softener existed. It took me a while for Judy to explain what it’s for.

That's when things became interesting. The ad didn't work for me on a dramatic level. I couldn’t understand why five women, sitting around in a cafe, would suddenly start discussing the state of their stools. Nor could I understand why one would be carrying stool softener in her bag and happily bring it out, mid latte. Somehow, it didn’t seem appropriate. And then my mind, inquisative as always, began to ask the sorts of questions I knew I had to have answered. How hard is hard? How soft is soft? How did they come up with a solution? How do they handle quality control? Are there any side-effects? And how is this solution better than bananas?

I hope to do a piece on stool softeners this week but in the meantime, it’s Monday, so let’s have some digestion facts.

You probably know that the human body can’t digest corn but did you know it also can’t digest walnut husks, beetle wings, or black cornflakes? The human intestine is three point two miles long but can stretch to nearly twice that length and is springier than bungee cord. Did you know that the gases produced by all the world’s vegetarians cause more damage to the planet that all the diesel engines? The gases from just one digested lentil could power a bulb for seven minutes. Finally, stomach acid is so powerful that prisoners have been known to use it to melt the bars to their jail cells.