Train Tourette's Syndrome

Bless his little cotton socks

On the way to yet another expo today I was standing on the District Line (delays at Kings Cross seemed to have screwed up the whole system) and a little boy in a blue school uniform was munching away on a dairylea and ham cracker sarnie and playing up. When laying on his mother didn't work or bumping into her, he started to recite the names of random train stations - "Sunbury, Addlestone, Staines, Aldgate East, Turnham Green". "Shut up or I'll tell your teacher," his mum said, much to my relief. After all who'd want their son to grow up to be a PA system.

However, in a strange echo of the guy who found offence about the London Marathon Adidas ad in last week's Metro with lots of swear words in it, including "twat", the little boy took a sudden interest in his mum's Metro. So said at top of his voice - "Look they're naked". I looked from my superior standing position and it was some sort of "art" with a picture of two tailor's dummies.

Many thanks to Green Fairy for blogging The Sun's outrage at the London marathon ad:

Rob, of Sheffield, South Yorks, told The Sun: "I was reading it on a break and suddenly I saw the word 't**t'. Imagine the embarrassment of a mum whose six-year-old son is asking her what a 't**t' is?"

Green Fairy said "It's someone who rings up a tabloid newspaper to complain about a mildly rude word appearing in advert in a newspaper only given out first thing in the morning to commuters in case a child somewhere in the country with reading skills far advanced of their age should stumble somehow upon a copy, pick out that word from all the others and march up to their mother in the middle of a church social demanding their childhood innocence be stolen away with an immediate etymological definition, darling."



There's no way this particular little boy would have been able to have read the words on this ad - most five or six year olds are really bored with small type as they find it too difficult to read, but I'm sure he'd have more to say about the half naked women in The Sun, like the "naked" people in Metro. It also took me about twenty minutes to find the offending t word. It'll be easier for you as there's only a small section above, but imagine this as a double page spread.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Wednesday, April 21, 2004 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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