Review: Rentokil dryer

I really wanted to like this hand dryer. Unfortunately because I have rats for hands I couldn't.

Yarmouth, Yarmouth has many delights
Balmy days and barmy nights
Penny arcades and socio-economic deprevation
Shameless shops and a shopless station
But the tale I tell is of a shopping complex
The toilets within that thrill and yet vex
Hand dryers there were - not one but two
And I shall tell you of these in this, my review.

Ok so you can see why I don't do a poetry blog. But I find Yarmouth such a lyrical town that I just get carried away. The 2 hand dryers were in the shopping arcade. The first was a warner howard, pretty forgettable. I've used them before - they have one at Blickling Hall I think - and all you need to know is every person who I saw use it ended up finishing the drying process with the dryer I am about to get to.

Let's address the elephant in the room - yes this is a rip off of the Dyson Airblade. The real question is - is this such a bad thing? The nature of progress often involves building upon the foundations of what has come before - Newton and the shoulders he stood on spring to mind. It is inevitable that something as pioneering as the Airblade would be mimicked. Now in any art this is not necessarily something deserving credit. Say a new band comes along that sounds exactly like Spandau Ballet and we rule out coincidence (no-one's going to seriously argue that a sound as divine as the one the spands produced could happen again by chance) then where is the value in them? You may as well listen to messrs Hadley, Kemp, Kemp, Keeble  & Norman doing it with originality. But then what if that Spandau rip-off band end up using the Spands sound as a jumping-off point to produce their own, Spandau influenced, but unique sound. That would justify it. Most musicians start out imitating their heroes and the great ones transcend this.

So is this faux-airblade a stepping stone to greater innovations? I think it's too early to say but it is worth pointing out that it does have at least one notable difference from the airblade.

As you'll see in the high quality video below, this dryer (I didn't catch its name, isn't that always the way in public toilets though? You stick your hands in someone and in the heat of the moment forget to do introductions) has a delectable blue lit display which counts down from 10, with the idea being by 0 your hands are satisfactorily dry. I'm a man who likes extra dryness so for me I'd like them dry by 2 and have the last couple of numbers to achieve that extra "5 crackers in a nun's mouth" feel.

Perhaps the video does not convey this but it made me feel rather like James Bond, fighting the dastardly water villain as the clock ticks down on a bomb conveniently situated where I can stop it at the last second.

As I fondly remember this experience the answer comes like a flash of light in my mind. Who gives a shit if this rips off the airblade? Did it dry my hands well? yes - and 11 times better than the Warner Howard which wasn't ripping off the airblade. And maybe, just maybe Dyson might add a James Bond countdown to a future airblade model...

NSFW: You snooty fucking jumped up lidl.

Like many a hand dryer reviewer before me, I am conflicted about class. I am fully aware that class is a construct used to control the masses by setting us against each other – have the working and middle classes fight so that the ruling elite have the attention and anger deflected away from them as they continue to oppress us. It also keeps people content with being screwed because they feel that buying the guardian and baking twee muffins in Cath Kidston aprons means they’ve got somewhere in life rather than question why they’re still unhappy and who might be the cause of it.

But at the same time I’m aware of how uncomfortable I am around people who identify as middle class and how much I self-identify as working class. I lived my childhood on council estates, my parents on benefits,  and we called our evening meal “tea.” There was no expectation in our family to go to university in fact I can’t think of any of my relations who went bar my sister and cousin – but in both cases that was only in the last couple of years and not at the time when all my peers who were sons-of-architects had swanned off to Oxford or Cambridge.

I recently went to a plant and book sale where people talked in swollen Radio 4 accents about how much their houses cost and laughed at how some people actually shopped at ASDA. Then again I look down on my aunt, not just because she is a petty racist, but because her manner and vernacular seem common to me when compared to my own demeanour. Yes, I am a hypocrite. As time goes by I think this is actually the primary characteristic of human beings, not valour or kindness, selfishness or that weird feeling you get when you’re on a stationary train and the train next to you moves and just for a moment you feel like your train is the one that’s moving. Not a defining characteristic of humans you say? Ever seen a snail or a gibbon or a pike have that feeling? No, thought not. It takes sufficiently advanced brain functions and anyway I’m getting away from the point.  And while I’m away from it I have to confess I wrote a hip hop song when I was 14 called Class Warfare, which started with the lines, “Class warfare and the battle lines are drawn/I’m out on the frontline kicking up a storm.” Forgive me, I have sinned.

So anyway…you can imagine how awkward I feel at Waitrose. I hate the way people carry themselves in there, like they are so much better because they are buying the same stuff I get at Morrisons or Asda for an inflated price and they don’t have to deal with any riff raff. And yet I know if I was in Aldi that’s how I’d carry myself.

I have a way of dealing with this – protest shitting. First of all I ask the poshest looking member of staff “where are the bloody bogs in ‘ere?” The combination of the vulgar term for the lavatory/WC plus dropping my H and cursing usually makes them wince. But my game has only just begun. Next I head to the bogs and proceed to drop the kind of P-bomb that could easily be mistaken for an act of biological warfare. Let me be blunt- I don’t have shits, I have exorcisms. And the thought of those middle class shoppers having to encounter that makes me laugh. Uncontrollably. The spasms of chortling only contrive to make me unleash more brown fury.

I’m not a sicko though. I wash my hands afterwards. And that’s where Waitrose really lets itself down. All that money they’re fleecing out of aspirational teachers who knit pastel yoga mats, you’d think they’d invest in a Dyson or Air Fury. Nope, just a shitty Manrose.

Waitrose: you’ve let me down, you’ve let your customers down, but most of all…

You’ve let yourself down.

You snooty fucking jumped up lidl.

Celebrities with Hand Dryers for Heads #2

Ok so maybe you got the last one - I'll admit, Jaspar Carrot was a pretty easy one. But listen, now it gets hard you understand?

Celebrities with Hand Dryers for Heads #1

Hello all, sorry I've been away. New reviews coming soon. But first...

Can you guess the celebrity?