Sometime in the mid 1980s, there was a TV advert for Boots, Woolworths, or W.H. Smiths that featured a typical family, or a typical TV advert family, gathered round their Christmas tree opening presents. So far, so predictable.

But, the bit that sticks in my mind is that the young lad rips off the wrapping paper from his gift to reveal a Black Uhuru album. A Jamaican reggae group who had enjoyed considerable success with their Grammy Award winning album Anthem, Black Uhuru had gone off the boil a bit by the time of this advert. And that’s why I remember it so vividly: the sheer unlikeliness of an English white kid age 10 or 11 being given a copy of Brutal (sample lyrics ‘More promises, more wet dreams / Man waking, baby screams’). It’s just not the sort of thing you expect to see when, at the same time, Mummy has been given a Phillips Lady Shave.

That being said, memory can play tricks. Despite spending hours on YouTube watching old Christmas commercials, I can’t find it. But I’m pretty sure it existed. What I do find with depressing regularity is the 2025 John Lewis Christmas advert, which sadly definitely does exist.

The first time I saw it I thought it was a government public health information film. A warning against the downsides to taking ecstasy or, alternatively, alerting the populus at large to the signs of having a stroke. Either way, the Dad doesn’t look particularly happy about finding a copy of Alison Limerick’s club anthem Where Love Lives under the Christmas tree, I mean, it actually makes him shed tears. Perhaps he wished he had scored some Mandy before the shops closed for the holiday, or feels that having a stroke would be preferable to a day at home with his family.

Don’t get me wrong, Where Love Lives is an absolute banger of a tune. The Chicago House sound places it firmly in the 90s, still, it hasn’t aged one iota. But I’m wondering if, after an early flirtation with dub reggae in the mid 80s, that young lad with the Lady Shave Mum later got into the garage house scene. The timescale’s about right.

Stranger things have happened.

Where Love Lives

Mayflies