The UK’s National Health Service is running a good and sensible campaign on how best to seek medical treatment.
Thankfully they haven’t wasted any NHS cash on campaign artwork, resorting instead to pictures from a cheap and very cheerful People of Many Lands clip-art collection:
Beware the demented dentist
Unfortunately, their miniature ‘healthcare professionals’ don’t really look like real people. Don’t trust them — they’re zombies! Everyone has nice, healthy pink cheeks — even the black man! The sweet girl with the almond-shaped face and plaits looks like she sprang from some dodgy old Ladybird story with a title like Little Running Bird’s Big Adventure. The guy with the bag (‘You forgot your lunch!’) is meant to be ‘ethnic’ in some way. Is he Turkish or Portuguese, or a bit of both? And what do his triangular hair and big eyebrows signify?
But… It’s the technology that really worries me. The mad, waving dentist who’s been at the nitrous oxide — wild orange hair, Jaws teeth — has on his head one of those old torch things that doctors used to wear in cigarette ads. What a fun guy, with his green latex hands! Another man is holding up what I think is meant to be a good-news X-ray, but looks like some scary relic of medical history.
If advertisements for the NHS computer department featured floppy disks and men wielding soldering irons, I’d be tempted to go elsewhere. I suspect that younger patients won’t even recognise these objects from a (thankfully) bygone age.
…and not to be picky, given the NHS’s daily miracles, but the dress sense of their mini-zombies leaves a lot to be desired. I can’t believe my National Insurance is funding their terrible wardrobe. Blue-and-green-should-never-be-seen was never more true, Mr Dentist — and big trousers, big red trousers, Mr X-ray White Stripes, I don’t think so…
Sam Dutton’s blog 