Latest news with #poo
Yahoo
05-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Children's questions inspire exhibition about poo
Questions from primary school children, such as "Why is poo so smelly?", have formed the basis of a medical exhibition. Among the artefacts in POO! at the Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds are faeces encased in resin on loan from the National Poo Museum. Curator Jack Gann said the children asked some surprising questions, such as "Why is it called poo?" and "Does poo go mouldy?" He said: "These are all things that I don't know. So we had to go to scientists and historians." Mr Gann added: "The children were much more curious than we thought. "People might feel uncomfortable asking some of these questions, but they're not silly questions. "I was really pleased the children felt increasingly free to throw out big questions and that curiosity is what we're looking to in our audience and what we hope that exhibitions like this reward. "It's not just us telling them what to think. It's them asking questions and searching for answers." The exhibition also features a 12th Century Medieval poo, a proctogram chair -designed for inspecting the rectum - and Victorian constipation cures. It was curated with children from Harehills Primary School, one of nine local schools the Thackray works in partnership with. Other questions the children posed included: 'Why is a fart colourless?', "How do you get constipated?" and "why is poo brown?" Mr Gann said the "why is poo so smelly?" question inspired his favourite item in the exhibition. He said: "Skatole, which is the chemical component that makes poo smell, is obviously a nasty smell when you get it in poo, but in a different amount it's actually very pleasant. "It's in a lot of flowers and perfumes. So because we have collections that touch on that we can display some things that smell of poo but smell good. "One of the objects on display is the anointing oil that's used at the Royal Coronation, which is full of those floral ingredients, which all have skatole as a chemical compound in them. "So we get to ask: does this smell of poo, does it make the King smell of poo?" He added another recurring theme among the children was "Why is poo disgusting?", something the team had to ask historians to look into. "We talked to a couple of different historians about this, about how it's not necessarily disgusting in every culture, how you're not born naturally finding it disgusting. "That's kind of a learned thing that we do socially, because obviously it carries a lot of disease. So you learn that that's probably not a thing you want to put in your mouth." 'POO!' runs at the Thackray Museum of Medicine from 26 July to 4 January 2026. Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North. Museum launches 'choose your own price' admission 'Plague dress' on show at city medical museum
BBC News
05-07-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Harehills children's questions inspire Leeds exhibition about poo
Questions from primary school children, such as "Why is poo so smelly?", have formed the basis of a medical the artefacts in POO! at the Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds are faeces encased in resin on loan from the National Poo Museum. Curator Jack Gann said the children asked some surprising questions, such as "Why is it called poo?" and "Does poo go mouldy?"He said: "These are all things that I don't know. So we had to go to scientists and historians." Mr Gann added: "The children were much more curious than we thought. "People might feel uncomfortable asking some of these questions, but they're not silly questions."I was really pleased the children felt increasingly free to throw out big questions and that curiosity is what we're looking to in our audience and what we hope that exhibitions like this reward."It's not just us telling them what to think. It's them asking questions and searching for answers." The exhibition also features a 12th Century Medieval poo, a proctogram chair -designed for inspecting the rectum - and Victorian constipation was curated with children from Harehills Primary School, one of nine local schools the Thackray works in partnership questions the children posed included: 'Why is a fart colourless?', "How do you get constipated?" and "why is poo brown?"Mr Gann said the "why is poo so smelly?" question inspired his favourite item in the said: "Skatole, which is the chemical component that makes poo smell, is obviously a nasty smell when you get it in poo, but in a different amount it's actually very pleasant."It's in a lot of flowers and perfumes. So because we have collections that touch on that we can display some things that smell of poo but smell good."One of the objects on display is the anointing oil that's used at the Royal Coronation, which is full of those floral ingredients, which all have skatole as a chemical compound in them."So we get to ask: does this smell of poo, does it make the King smell of poo?" He added another recurring theme among the children was "Why is poo disgusting?", something the team had to ask historians to look into."We talked to a couple of different historians about this, about how it's not necessarily disgusting in every culture, how you're not born naturally finding it disgusting."That's kind of a learned thing that we do socially, because obviously it carries a lot of disease. So you learn that that's probably not a thing you want to put in your mouth."'POO!' runs at the Thackray Museum of Medicine from 26 July to 4 January 2026. Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
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
