Cross-species love

Things have been quiet around here recently. I've been working quite hard in the week and drinking too much at the weekends, rendering me even more useless and lazy than usual. But I've been roused from my lethergy by the latest in one of the oddest advert series ever conceived - the bed company ones where a man hippo and a yellow woman duck share a bed and appear to be in a stable relationship.

There are so many problems with the basic concept. Mr Hippo wears pyjamas but Mrs Duck doesn't, the tart. It is never explained why they choose to sleep in a low-quality human bed - perhaps they had the old "I'd be far happier in a nest, darling"/"Shut it you slagbag, I'm sleeping in a big pile of mud and that's that" argument and this was the compromise. The logistics of what goes on after the light goes out (I imagine by the duck pulling the cord with her beak) are too alarming to analyse in detail but would surely be considered to be a bit strong by even the most open minded.

But something has changed in the latest installment. He's always been a lot larger than her, as you'd expect. Now, presumably after extensive market research into how much reality-bending the public can cope with in an onscreen cross-species bunk up, the size difference has been reduced - she seems to have grown in size to about goose proportions. Which is closer to the size of a hippo, but not that close.

So why make the change? One attack of flailing hippo night terrors will still obliterate her. It's still an unacceptably weird set up. But there will have been meetings, conference calls, pie and flip charts, advertising briefings and hundreds of man hours devoted to enlarging the duck. I guarantee that not one extra crappy bed has been sold as a result.