Now Hands that Do Dishes...

"Can feel soft as your face, with mild, green, Fairy liquid".

Come on now, be honest. You were ready to sing the second two lines of this triplet, word perfect, the moment you read my subject line, weren't you?

The reason you can still warble along to these frankly rather banal lyrics is largely due to the efforts of the late Cliff Adams, who until his death in 2001 was for several decades the purveyor of familiar ditties on BBC Radio Two every Sunday afternoon on "Sing Something Simple".


Far from just keeping grannies and grandpas happy with these memorable melodies sung a capella except for the versatile mouth organ of Jack Emblow, among Cliff Adams' weekday jobs was making a mint composing advertising "jingles" for everything from Murray's spearmint confection to an unpromising new concoction of dried potato which actually proved to be quite a smash- and the most popular British TV advert of all time, to boot! He probably composed the Fairy liquid jingle quicker than I can write this long-overdue posting to Anyway..

BBC TV's BBC Four channel is currently running a fascinating series of programmes about the advertising industry- the words, images and predominantly people that American writer Vance Packard famously described as "The Hidden Persuaders" in the title of his seminal book on the subject in the 1970s. A programme last night on the history of TV food advertising brought back many memories for my brother and me of the ITV advertising of our childhood.

Through pester power rather than today's nutritional wisdom, put-upon parents (though not usually ours, I recall) were persuaded they could pacify their restless offspring with merely a finger of toffee and chocolate fudge, or that an equally child-friendly digit proferred by a benevolent sea captain could get the little ones eating and enjoying fish. The ingenuity with which advertising agencies achieved this was to guarantee the TV commercials and their slogans a place in the cultural memory even if the products are becoming portiona not grata in the health conscious noughties.

What a pity it is then, that while we remember the tasty, hasty snacks of our formative years so fondly just hearing the jingles- or the washing up that followed it for Mum and her little helpers, for so many the most heart-rending music ever composed coupled with the most profound words ever spoken or written will bring little or no associations this week. Today is Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week in the Western Christian calendar. Yet for a great proportion of Britons, it might as well be Palmolive Sunday.

This is the day when Jesus of Nazareth rode triumphantly into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey, an unconventional entrance to the most sacred place of the Jewish nation, certainly, but enacted exactly in this way to fulfil scripture predicting this event,written many centuries before. So excited were those who saw Jesus arriving, that they threw down branches of palm leaves along his way, much in the way we'd welcome the coming of the monarch these days with a red carpet.

A people abused and exploited by an occupying power saw this young man of just 33 as the answer to all their hopes for liberation from the hated forces of Rome. Many hailed him as their king, much like a Hosanna hero, who would break the yoke of Caesar's stronghold and take the city and nation by whatever means necessary to restore political control to its rightful occupants.

How sad it is, with hindsight, that they were not on message, or at any rate only believed in this instant solution to all their problems for just a few days. Few saw in the substantial bread and wine offered one Thursday evening in first century Palestine, the most important meal ever put before mankind and a promise far more enduring than anything Proctor and Gamble could make because it came from the maker of life itself.

Instead of taking what was on offer in the greatest free trial ever-the love of God offered by his only Son- by the end of the same week Jerusalem's passover-consuming population were abandoning him faster than you could say buy one, set one free. Barabas left jail, Jesus was condemned to his fate- crucifixion. No brand loyalty here, then, but only the branding of a cruel crown of thorns and the nailmarks of the most hideous wrongful conviction ever enacted.

Standing around him at the cross the following day, what we now call Good Friday, as this young man who had done nothing deserving death struggled to breathe, was his best friend, along with the mother whom this dutiful Jewish son had doubtless helped to wash pots and pans at many a Jewish festival. Just the night before, however, the hands of the one so often portrayed as meek and mild had washed the rough, dirty feet of the same followers who would betray, desert and disown him at his hour of greatest need.