The best...er...what exactly?

The best a man can get?

That's Gillette's claim. I fell for it. For years. There's the inference, too. The best [shaving products] a man can buy, but also the best [generally] a man can get.

I have it on good authority (wife, daughters) that the best a bloke can get does not equate to particularly high aspirations. Even when not overtly engaged in anything irritating, there's always something. There's jazz. There's football. There's cricket. There's headphones. There's that ability to quote the 'love the smell of napalm in the morning' Apocalypse Now speech.

There's the inability to resist ending any phone call that involves a bit of tact and diplomacy, after hanging up (but only a microsecond after hanging up) with a Bruce Willis mumbled Die Hard 1 “yippie-ki-aay, m*********er”.

There's that thing where, the greater the need to resist rude, sweary, gutter filth jokes and one-liners, the more of them pop straight into your head. The best a man can get? We're a gender hardwired to see the 50% mark as a triumph of unprecedented proportions. The greater the risk? The more chance we'll get it wrong. Royal weddings? Only attended by females and wannabe females. What proper bloke could resist being immortalised as leaping up at an England wicket, or an Arsenal goal, or a Harlequins try, just as some future monarch says 'I do' (and what do you do?).

Anyway, five blades in a vibrating, battery-using extravaganza isn't the best, actually. I found myself doing three (one with, two against the grain) passes with a five blade, battery-operated, vibrating monstrosity, with replacement blade packs so expensive that they had security tags like the tellies. That's fifteen blades, and an indifferent shave.

No different to the shave achieved by three passes with a single sharp blade. With, across, and against the grain. Aftershave splash and job done. Maybe not the absolute best a man can get but darn close considering our starting point. If two blades are better than one, three better than two, five better than three, then why not a huge, static, cheese grater size thing with a billion blades that you rub your face on?

Honest 'guv, it's dah lead wot dunnit

Not the lead in the bullets. Crime wave, violent crime wave, follows on twenty years from infants absorbing traces of lead. Plumbing. Paint. Petrol. Wherever it gets into the blood, violence follows, about twenty years on.

There's any number of studies confirming the correlation. Just the one against. Sponsored by the Ethyl Corporation. They were a major manufacturer of tetraethyl lead.

There's one remaining manufacturer. Where? Here. Ellesmere Port. Innospec. Export only. To wherever hasn't a ban in place. Yet. Cluedo? The lead pipe. In the legacy plumbing / paint on the skirting / four star petrol in the Rev Green's Bentley. Innospec, with the tetraethyl lead, in the middle east.

Arsene...

...you're mad, mate. Call it a day.