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The Stephen Fry flu jab advert

Story location: Home / Blog /
03/Nov/2008

I've been hearing Stephen Fry's voice a lot recently. We've been watching his TV programme where he's visiting all 50 American states, but we've also been hearing him on the radio. There is a set of adverts which gets a lot of airplay where he encourages people to get the flu jab. The adverts all follow the same pattern:

Having the flu is compared to an annoying situation, then having the flu when you suffer from a particular complaint is likened to 2 annoying situations. One such advert compares having the flu to having a neighbour's dog bark constantly. Then having the flu while suffering from heart disease is compared to: the neighbour's dog barking while he plays the saxophone.

My first thought was 'how does the dog play the saxophone while barking?'. The second time I heard the advert I realised he probably meant the dog barking while the neighbour plays the saxophone. I would have thought that Stephen Fry of all people would have been concerned by the disconnected pronoun in the sentence. Either that or I'm just easily confused.