The Brylcreem Poster

Anyone who has read my previous ‘essays’ will know about my teenage fascination with Brylcreem, my mother’s disapproval of it, and how these two factors combined to create an obsession. I suppose it was much like the Biblical fruit which was all the more desirable for being forbidden. Well, a picture in the local paper’s ‘Memory Lane’ feature recently stirred up a recollection which I thought was worth sharing.

It used to be common for household products to be promoted by large billboards or ‘hoardings’. They have largely gone out of fashion but at one time they were seen everywhere; on the gable end of a terrace of houses, along a railway embankment, or around a wartime bombed site. Yes, I’m a child of the 1950s, and I can say from experience that nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. The ‘Memory Lane’ photograph showed a group of children kicking a ball about in a back street, somewhere in the North of England in about 1958. On a terrace-end wall behind them was a poster advertising Brylcreem, which in the 1950s was still pretty much an everyday thing.

I remember a series of posters which all followed the same format. A red background, with a black and white image of a laughing young man with glossy hair. White lettering stated something along the lines of “A little dab of BRYLCREEM keeps my hair in place all day”. There were several variations but the one I really identified with showed a boy of about my own age, which would have been about twelve or thirteen at the time, rather than an adult. This wasn’t the same poster that appeared in the ‘Memory Lane’ picture, sadly, but the very sight of that photo took me straight back. And what a memory it was.

The images on the posters were obviously based on photographs, but the artist responsible had evidently used their skill to optimise the appearance of the subject’s hair. The boy was a bit different from the others. No ‘little dab’ for this lucky boy, if the enhanced image was to be believed he had far more cream on his hair than any barber would have dared to use. And yet, the caption read “The barber put BRYLCREEM on my hair!” which implied the barber was indeed responsible for this magnificent excess, and the boy’s face revealed the shy but delighted look of a willing victim. The poster artist had worked wonders with the impression of wet gloss, and I can imagine them having a twinkle in their eye as they worked on it. Unlike the moderate gloss shown on the other posters, the highlights on this boy’s hair suggested it was wetted through, completely solid with the cream, and glistening with a deep liquid shine. For me, this was my perfect fantasy haircut and the sight of it got my ‘Brycreem Envy’ stirred up like never before.  Fancy coming out of the barber’s shop with your hair Brylcreemed like that!

My mother, naturally, was appalled the first time she saw this poster and observed “Look at that boy’s hair, doesn’t he look ridiculous”. As always in such situations, I feigned indifference, but secretly I thought that boy’s hair looked wonderful. It was an ideal to which, at some future date when the opportunity allowed, I hoped to aspire.

At the ago of twelve I had yet to discover the joy of masturbation. I was vaguely aware that my willie wasn’t just for peeing out of, but the proof of that wouldn’t come (so to speak) until I was fourteen. However, I strongly suspect that if I could have found a copy of that Brylcreem poster, say in a magazine, my discovery of a certain guilty teenage pleasure would have been made much more quickly.

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