Wayne Rooney's horror tackle on the big wet wobbly stuff what kids don't like drinking
It's cheap, clear, plentiful, has no offensive taste, and is good for you … is it any wonder you can't get kids to drink water.
Water to our six-year-old is liquid sprout. He will drink it only under threat.
Unless it's fizzing, purple, packed with enamel eroding sugar and poured from a bottle that looks like a bloated ray gun he doesn't want to know.
Water sounds, and looks, dull. Where's the polar bear in sunglasses? Why no fizz? And if it doesn't clean my 2p pieces – it can't be any good, can it?
He doesn't buy the health benefits. And who can blame him? They're being sold to him by a decrepit old fool with buck teeth and hollow cheeks (that's me by the way, not the wife).
I know where he's coming from. Eat Yourself Sexy is a new show on TV. It aims to show how you can transform yourself from a loveless fat oaf into a sex god/goddess in just eight week. Sounds good. It's hosted by Gillian McKeith. Pass the sick bag.
As a product-endorsement goes I can't imagine she's going to get much buy-in. She last hosted You Are What You Eat. Which begged the question: What was she eating ... old trout?
It's the same story with our kids. Is a cynical 44-year-old hack worn down by years of abuse (mainly from the wife and kids as it happens) really a good public face for the benefits of water? I think not. I am the new face of chamois leather.
What is needed is a finely-honed athlete with a potty mouth and short fuse. Wayne Rooney is idolised by the kids and they want to be like him. Our two are almost two-thirds of the way there. Potty mouthed with short fuses.
Our six-year-old, in a fit of fury last week, blasted his mum with what I consider to be the finest of all his insults so far. His face contorted with rage (I think we'd asked him to drink his water) he called her a "cow's tiddler." In fact, I'm sure it's what Mr Rooney called the referee in England's clash with Egypt midweek, but then I'm no great lip-reader.
Imagine my disgust then, when Wayne Rooney appears on a new TV ad, cheerfully swigging a luminous blue soft drink and, to add insult to injury, appears to pour scorn on the humble water beverage.
For those not familiar with the ad, it shows twin Wayne Rooneys playing football against each other. One Rooney drinks Powerade (a blue so-called sports drink) and the other drinks water (wet stuff found in rivers).
As you might expect, the Powerade-drinking Rooney wins the battle while the despondent water imbibing Wayne is vanquished.
The message to watching children is simple to me: it says colourful soft drinks in fancy plastic bottles are good. The crystal clear life-giving liquid of earth is bad.
What chance do we parents have against that?
They may as well go the whole hog and show England star Steven Gerrard holding an apple being given the runaround by his Mars bar eating twin puffing on a Marlborough Light?
If they do, remember you read it here first.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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