Da Goddess

Those Wacky Brits Are At It Again!

The British are a wee bit off. How else do you explain why it took eighteen years to find softer toilet paper??

Jan. 4, 2005 — Britain's civil service embarked on an 18-year quest for the perfect toilet paper after a doctor voiced concern about a diplomat's haemorrhoids, according to a government file made public Tuesday.

John Hunt, a London physician, wrote to the Treasury's medical adviser in 1963 after he examined Sir John Pilcher, who was Britain's ambassador to Austria and, later, Japan, the Daily Telegraph reported.

"A patient of mine ... thinks that the government lavatory paper is out of date and extremely bad for his complaint (haemorrhoids) and he has asked me if there is any chance of it being changed to a softer type," Hunt wrote.

Leave it to a diplomat to suddenly cause everyone concern over a crappy...er...substandard product.

It soon emerged that Her Majesty's Stationery Office, in charge of buying all government toilet paper, preferred the rough stuff because it cost the taxpayer less.

A lively correspondence followed, involving such interested parties as combative staff unions, the august School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (which thought hard, shiny paper was better) and the Treasury typing pool.

In the 1970s, "creped paper" gained favour as the price factor evaporated. Then in 1980, a team of epidemiologists weighed in with a report that argued that soft paper was more hygienic.

The following year, soft paper made its debut in government toilets, bringing relief to countless bureaucratic bottoms.

Ah, the beauty of bureaucracy! And everyone got paid while millions bled.

The hefty dossier was among 50,000 files brought to light Tuesday by the National Archives in Kew, west London under a Freedom of Information Act that came into effect on New Year's Day.

Thank God for the Freedom of Information Act. We couldn't live without knowing this.

I hope they can sleep better now. I know I won't be....I'll be haunted by visions of powder-wigged sphincters dancing around on cotton balls, waving pound notes. It wouldn't be so bad if John Cleese were in there, but I'm afraid he's horribly absent from the festivities.