The Ronseal negative

Ronseal is a woodstain and wood dye for outdoors, sheds, fences and the like. A few years ago, the character in their ad campaign, via agency HHCL, told us that Ronseal 'does exactly what it says on the tin'. The phrase entered popular culture, as all great slogans do, to the extent that even Colgate copied it, substituting the word 'tin' for 'tube'.

There is a negative to the phrase. It is in fact more common that when we instruct someone to 'simply...', the more complicated and not simple the task. If the task was that simple it would be intuitive and I'd have smashed it by now.

The slogan came to mind when I saw this removal truck parked near where I live this afternoon. It's the use of the definite article, so placed that we pronounce it 'thee'. It is though pretty smug to say that you are the when really you're only a - you're indefinite, not definite. Even if you tell the world you are 'the village tearoom', you're actually not, a hundred other villages may have the same claim. Have we lost the power to dream up a unique name? Are all the good ones gone? Of course not, there's plenty more fish in the sea, and whether we go for the abstract or a sense of the eponymous. You would indeed think that such a business is a people one, built on a reputation of not being tardy and not breaking the best china, scratching the floors or cracking full-length mirrors. Call it the name of the person who started it, or where they started it. The removal company does what it says on the tin, but it needs a bit more.