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Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells

11th February 2008 by Helena 7 Comments  

Mr RudeThis afternoon I was on Radio BBC Southern Counties (what?! How could you miss it?) talking about a new Mr Man character. He is called Mr Rude and he encourages children to pull his finger and then he farts. Apparently he does all this in a French accent.

Call me old-fashioned, but isn’t this just a tad low-rent? And while we’re on the subject, last night I saw the most disgusting television ad I have ever seen. I won’t go into too many details but it showed a man on the loo. Bad enough you might think, but it got worse. He realises the loo-paper has run out and looks around him and then at the newspaper he is reading and decided the newspape is too good to use so doesn’t. His expression is disgusting, as is the whole idea of it.

What is this advertisement for? Some low-rent, down-market paper you or I will never have heard of? No, it’s for the football section of The Times. The TIMES for crying out loud? THE TIMES OF LONDON as it has proudly been known since 1803 when its name was changed from The Daily Universal Register.

At the risk of sounding like the legendary ‘disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’, I am just that. Although happily I don’t live in Tunbridge Wells.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008


Filed Under: Britain, Press, blog --> Tagged With: disgusted, tunbridge, wells

7 thoughts on Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells

  • clare says:
    11th February 2008 at 9:40 pm

    Hi Helena,
    I’d love to have heard what you said about Mr. Fart! Why does he have a French accent?
    In my Parisian apartment, in a very chic part, which I’m lucky enough to live in at the moment, a plumber came to fix the blocked loo. He thoroughly enjoyed himself all afternoon shouting ‘Merde!Merde!, and delightedly showed me what he had loosened!
    Also, there’s a man who stands on the pavement nearby every morning, next to the inevitable heap of dog mess which has appeared overnight, and addresses only very well dressed ladies with ‘Comment s’appelle-ca?’ (What do you call this?) to get tremendous kicks out of the reply!

  • Graham says:
    12th February 2008 at 9:05 am

    Dear Héléna.

    I was born in Tunbridge Wells. And although not “disgusted”, I totally agree with your remarks.

    Mr. Hargreaves has got it wrong with Mr. Rude. The French are not given to scatological humour, their rudeness is usually confined to the verbal affront of “merde”, “chier” etc. and it is not unusual to hear a respectable father call his unruly son “un petit con”. This comes easy to the French, rather like the British schoolboy equivalent of writing “bum” on the wall and running away.

    Aren’t we lucky to have the “F” word?

    As for the more unfortunate bodily functions, this is usually left to the Dutch and German ad agencies to make fun of. I’ve seen the commercial for The Times and it makes me squirm with embarrassment. Not an easy trick for someone who has spent over forty years as an advertising writer and art director. What on Earth were they thinking?

    In defence of Tunbridge Wells. I don’t live there either. But if for some awful, unimaginable reason I had to return to the UK, Tunbridge Wells wouldn’t be such a bad option.

  • Miko says:
    12th February 2008 at 3:56 pm

    I agree Graham. Tunbridge Wells is not that bad. I don’t live in England at the moment but really enjoyed my 10 years there. Helena, I’m sure you know that Mr Hargreaves lives very close to TW. You should have told him off when you were in Sussex!

  • helena says:
    12th February 2008 at 4:03 pm

    Hi Miko
    I should have done. Actually I agree with you both that TW isn’t bad at all if you have to live in England, we lived in a lovely village called Mayfield very close to there.
    Hx

  • TJ says:
    12th February 2008 at 4:18 pm

    I thought Roger Hargreaves died in 1988(?). Who is responsible for ths horrible addition to the Mr. Men series?

  • Rupert says:
    14th February 2008 at 7:35 am

    Roger Hargreaves died at the end of the 1980s. He had a beautiful farm near Edenbridge where I did some work. It must be his son – or wife – who has come up with this latest idea.
    Can I add my support for Tunbridge Wells? The place I loathed was Tonbridge; I suppose it didn’t help that I went to school there.

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor in chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Helena is also working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in spring 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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