BIG TISSUE!
★ FEARFUL Brits are stockpiling toilet roll as coronavirus cases soar across the nation. Yesterday the Daily Star came to the rescue by printing an emergency supply of loo paper for our plucky readers.
★ But as fears of shortages grow as a result of panic buying, JAMES MOORE brings you the bog standard facts you need to know…
Before toilet paper, people used 1 water or leaves, while Ancient Greeks wiped with stones and Romans used sponges on sticks. The first toilet paper dates back to 6th century China. The first packaged toilet paper arrived 2 in the UK in 1880 when the British Perforated Paper Company began selling toilet paper in individual squares like tissues.
The first roll came in 1890 but it 3 wasn’t until 1935 that toilet paper was advertised as “splinter free”! Two-ply tissue was invented in 1942. Today people use an average 8.6 4 sheets per toilet visit – which works out at a whopping 57 sheets a day and more than 20,000 a year. It takes 71 trips to the loo to use up 5 the average roll.
Each Briton gets through 127 rolls 6 annually. We’re the world’s third biggest users and as a nation we spend more than £1billion on the stuff a year. About 83,048,116 rolls of toilet 7 paper are produced daily worldwide. It takes about 384 trees to make the toilet paper that one person uses in a lifetime.
A poll found 68% of people fold 8 their toilet paper and only 15% scrunch it.
Andrex’s first Labrador puppy 9 hit TV in 1972 and starred in 130 adverts.
Wild and wacky scents for toilet 10 paper include mulled wine, while US President Donald Trump has featured on novelty rolls.
11 Music mogul Simon Cowell is said to favour £10-a-roll black toilet paper. He once got covered in bog roll on Britain’s Got Talent. Singer Beyoncé demands red toilet paper on tour riders.
TV’S Kim Kardashian has promoted 12 Charmin toilet paper and actress Olivia Colman admits her hubby once stole some from Buckingham Palace.
13 More than 100,000 rolls are used at each Glastonbury festival and there’s an annual toilet paper wedding dress contest. Thanks to coronavirus, ebay has 14 listed £1,000 toilet rolls, but an Australian company once marketed a 22-carat gold roll costing more than £800,000 a poop – er, pop. In 2009 Cuba suffered a 15 national toilet paper crisis and in 1974, a joke about a shortage on US TV told by star Johnny Carson sparked panic buying on toilet paper across the nation.