The Great British High Street is in decline. Not just an economic collapse, but a slide into full-blown moral degeneracy. You might have thought that Boots was a brand you could trust but, as this picture shows, it’s causing some very serious faces in Bracknell.
Phwoar correspondent
Our modern-day Mary Whitehouse is acupuncturist mum-of-three from Crowthorne, Alison Savory (or ‘Savoury’ as we say in England). Well this moral crusader might be ‘Savory’, but her story is quite the opposite.
Get Bracknell, 14 January 2013 (story)
Horrified mum boycotts Boots after children pick up sex toy
A disgusted mum is boycotting high street chemist Boots after she found her children playing with a sex toy near the checkouts.
Alison Savory wrote to Boots chief executive Alex Gourlay after her sons, aged six and eight, picked up a purple Durex vibrator displayed ‘prominently’ in the store.
When a headline begins “Horrified mum boycotts Boots after children pick up sex…”, you should really count yourself lucky when the next word is “toy”. It could have been worse.
I don’t know how a shop might display a giant purple phallus in a non-prominent fashion – perhaps they would have been better hidden amongst the electric toothbrushes. If you want to see a more subtle display of vibrating erotica, you could always check the pub toilet vending machines (between the condoms and the breathmints). Anyway, Mrs Savo(u)ry undertook the only course of action available to the outraged: a stern letter.
She wrote to say she was ‘deeply disappointed’ a family company was contributing to the ‘erosion’ and urged him to consider whether the products and product placement were appropriate.
It’s spelled ‘erection’.
Unfortunately it all proved to be a total waste of time, effort, and paper. Boots replied to explain that the items were displayed to “demystify customers”. This prompted an alarmed Mrs Savo(u)ry to declare:
I don’t want my children demystified in Boots.
Well nobody enjoys being demystified in Boots, but that’s why they provide private consulting rooms next to the pharmacy.
A windscreen demystifier, yesterday.
So now the boycott is on, and Alison will have to go elsewhere for her paracetamol, holiday first-aid supplies and reasonably-priced lunchtime meal deals. As an acupuncturist by trade, you’d think Mrs Savory would be familiar with the medicinal deployment of pricks. Maybe she’s just worried about the competition.
