Freshen Up to an Unlikely Poetic Experience

‘Freshen up! Freshen up! Freshen up!! Get some pussy tonight!’ All around London this Easter weekend, the city’s finest criers will be making us gentlemen’s visits to the toilet that little bit more entertaining. But what do we get for our pound? Just a squirt and a lolly? Or are we getting an authentic poetic performance?

When, exactly, the Freshen Up guys first appeared on the toilet scene is hard to say, but it’s at least five years I’m sure, and they’re now a regular feature of any self-respecting London club, or even pub, toilet – sometimes just a few modest bottles of stink, sometimes a full deck of grooming products. For anyone hoping to escape without paying, the choice is one of bolting without washing your hands, or facing the shame of letting the guy facilitate the bathing and drying of your filthy paws and then not coughing up, inevitably incurring a (rightly) resentful look.

There is a poem, or rather song, from the, dare I say it, Book of Negro Folklore (1958, don’t ask) called the Ah-Got-Um Man, in which the eponymous street vendor declares, with boundless optimism, ‘Ah got fish/Ah got fruits/Ah got veg, yes ‘ndeed! /Ah got anything yo’ need’; (anyone who has been to Ibiza will also be familiar with his nefarious modern counterpart, the drug-peddling Lucky Lucky Men). And the Freshen Up guys are a modern incarnation of the old fruit and veg man, a seller of sexual success who has to make himself heard, using rhythm and rhyme, poetic patter, to get the attention of the punters.

Now, admittedly, the verse is all of a somewhat sexual bent (how else do you sell perfume to drunk men in a toilet?), but I think people are coming to expect a little more than just a single phrase or tune, and this is where the song and performance element becomes more of a selling point. The best I have heard, by a mile, the lord of the latrine, the prince of the privy, is the guy in The Artesian Well in Clapham, a booming comedian hustler I’d pay a quid to see any day. The only way I can even try to do him justice is with a structure of a few of his own words, to be read aloud in an appropriate manner and, in the middle, to the accompanying tune:

Freshen up! Freshen up! Freshen up!
Pumpumpaloi!!
No money, no honey!
No Gucci, no smoochi!
No gum, no cum!

Freshen up for poonani, poonani, poonani!
Freshen up for poonani, get that pussy!

No lolly, no jolly!
No splash, no gash!
No davidoff, no haveitoff!

Freshen up! Freshen up! Freshen up!
Pumpumpaloi!!

I would love to know if he has a rival out there, and some other favourite lines, and sorry if this has been a little one-sided, I have not had the privilege to hear a Freshen Up girl at work, but any insight would be most welcome.

Freshen Up guy: at a toilet near you…

Image by Markhillary courtesy of Flickr