Latest news with #Hagley
The Guardian
11-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
The latest Andrex advert is a life-changing masterpiece
If the latest Andrex TV advert had come along 50 years ago, it would have changed my life. It would have made my schooldays more enjoyable and might even have helped me to perform better academically. Honestly, I think it's a gamechanger. It begins, unpromisingly, with a schoolboy breaking wind in class. What puerile nonsense is this, I thought. Another boy turns to look at him and sniffs derisively. So far, so daft. But then up pops a killer statistic: 76% of kids hold their poo at school. And all of a sudden we're into public information film territory and I am transported back half a century to Hagley primary school where, between the ages of five and nine, I was definitely among the 76% of poo-holders. Middle school, too. Hell, even high school probably. I doubt I, er, went on school premises more than half a dozen times, all in. This can't have done me much good. As I've (over) shared before, at my school going into a cubicle to do what had to be done became a big deal. Word would go around the playground that some poor lad's fear and shame had been trumped by the urgency of his need to go, and there would be a rush to the boys' bogs to make it a spectator event. I have no idea what this was all about, or whether it happened anywhere else. As with most bad things, I suspect it was a boy thing, as girls always used cubicles anyway, so for them there was no great fuss. I say it again – if only this advert had come along back then. What happens is that the Andrex puppy appears in this kid's classroom. It looks up at the lad and gives him the nod. The lad nods back, stands up, parps once more and, toilet roll in hand, proceeds in triumph to the lav. In the nodding of a dog, all his shame has evaporated more quickly than any smell he generated. As he makes his way to where he's going, the kids salute this miracle of reframing by banging their desks and cheering. Someone fist-bumps him. And then he's in there, closing the door behind him, at which point, like a choir of angels, the whole school intones the word 'poo' in harmony. There's so much to unpick here. I've always bemoaned the absurdity of advertising something as impossibly mundane as toilet tissue. I mean, puppies running around unravelling the stuff and so on. Drivel. But now they've come up with this work of genius. In scraping the bottom of the barrel in search of something, anything, new to say about bog paper, they've found gold down there. It's telling that I only came across this masterpiece by accident as I mistimed some fast-forwarding trying to dodge an ad break on Sky Max. Does anyone watch TV ads any more? They can't do, or I'm sure this one, given the subject matter, would have caused a bit of a sensation. Unless, of course, it's just me. I must say that, as I rolled about laughing in delight at it, my family did look at me with more concern than usual. I'm now wondering what else I've been missing. What other works of advertising art have I fast-forwarded past? Just as if I've come across some music I love for the first time and now have to listen to everything that artist's ever done, I've started on Andrex's back catalogue. And, to my delight, there's one just as good from last year tackling the taboo of the office poo, with a subplot concerning the taking of reading matter in with you. Please tell me there's a box set of these things somewhere, with bonus features, outtakes, director's commentary and so on. And until further notice, I'll be buying no other brand of toilet tissue. It's the least I can do to show my appreciation. Adrian Chiles is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here
ABC News
14-05-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Tasmanian hazelnut farm Hazelbrae turns away from hospitality to online sales success
If you'd asked Tasmanian hazelnut grower Christie McLeod a year ago how she rated her online marketing skills it would have been tough to answer. Now, e-commerce and customers found through social media make up three-quarters of the farm's sales. It was a very different story 12 months ago. Despite Hazelbrae's trees being loaded with nuts, challenges in securing a loan forced Ms McLeod and her partner Mick Delphin to put their picturesque Hagley property in northern Tasmania up for sale. "Because the interest rates had doubled in 12 months we didn't have the financials through COVID … that could show we would pay it," Ms McLeod said. There simply wasn't enough confidence from banks that the family's product would sell. Luckily, the family-run business was able to secure a loan and take the property off the market. They've even just harvested their best-ever yield, coming in at 41 tonnes. And there are plans to expand the farm, from 5,000 trees to 6,000 over the next two years. "The first planting was 2005 so they've been there for a while, and we're just now learning how to harvest them," Ms McLeod joked. "It's actually 25 per cent greater than last year's yield for us, which is incredible." The couple purchased the property in 2014 and admit the past 11 years have been full of challenges. It included dealing with the devastating 2016 Tasmanian floods, an unexpected baby and more recently the pandemic. "COVID left us quite bare in the bank, because we were mostly in tourism at the time," Ms McLeod said. "So we really did struggle trying to balance what we were doing as farmers, and what we were doing as retail, restaurant, cafe and marketing. It prompted a rethink, with Hazelbrae choosing to transition out of hospitality to prioritise its farming operations. "It's really focused us on the farm and the product, and now we're seeing the results that will see us really comfortable in the future," Ms McLeod said. She said hiring a coach to learn how to increase the farm's online presence and build up sales also proved vital. "So, we sort of draw in some new people, but they mostly come from social media marketing. "One of our customers has ordered 16 times in 15 months, so lots of repeat customers." In late 2023, Ferrero Group, the Italian company behind chocolate products Nutella and Ferrero Rocher announced they would no longer grow hazelnuts in Australia. For the Australian arm of the company, it meant giving up on a $70 million hazelnut farm in southern New South Wales and announcing it would remove the million trees it had planted at the farm since 2013. The company cited long-term climate conditions for its decision. Ms McLeod said it had been a disappointing turn for hazelnut growers, with Ferrero's investment expected to result in growth for the sector. But the head of peak body Hazelnut Growers of Australia, Trevor Ranford, said he wasn't concerned and he continued to have high hopes for hazelnut farming in the country. "I saw it with pistachios, where the first two decades, the first 1,000 hectares was planted. In the past 12 years, an extra 2,000 hectares were planted, so the volumes are going up. "I see hazelnuts as being in that same aspect." Traditionally, hazelnuts have had the smallest share of Australia's nut-growing industry. In 2024, the sector produced about 544 tonnes of in-shell hazelnuts with a farm-gate value of $5.5 million, according to the peak body. There are roughly 1.2 million trees planted around Australia, primarily in the temperate areas of the south-east, including northern Tasmania. Mr Ranford said the long turnaround between planting trees and seeing a solid crop, which can take between five and seven years, held some farmers back from taking the leap to hazelnuts. But, he said he believed confidence was growing. Ms McLeod said she hoped her family's record crop would give confidence to other growers. "This year, we've actually hand-measured trees yielding up to 17 kilograms, and that's a really good indicator that it's possible to do this in Australia.
