There's something about Xmas that brings out the bad composer in a lot of New Zealand advertising copywriters.

This year, so far, I've heard three rewrites of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" advertising godknowswhat, and one rather good one written by the staff of a consumer affairs programme on TV which pilloried all the shonky commercial people they'd dealt with and to during the year.

paulb's excerpt from "while shepherds washed their socks by night" made me think about the old kid's ripoff of the all-time favourite carol. I'll quote it in full:

While shepherds washed their socks by night
All seated round the tub,
A bar of Sunlight Soap came down
And they began to scrub.

Does the Sunlight Soap reference mean anything to those of us not of the antipodean persuasion?


The idiot also known as Capfka ...