If you have kids, you’ll understand – Calpol’s brilliant strapline, attached to their equally fabulous TV advert showing ‘poorly’ children running riot around the house and garden, back to their normal selves after a dose of Calpol.

They could have easily crafted their creative around fear-based selling… one of my pet hates with health and insurance products… but they didn’t. They focussed on what makes us smile – our children misbehaving. Well other people’s children misbehaving makes us smile, not so much our own.

But I caught a news story this morning, via the Independent: Make it better? Child medicines contain banned additives linked to hyperactivity. The article goes on to point out that the food additives that have been ‘voluntarily’ banned from children’s foods, are still present in out children’s medicines – and that they are linked to causing hyperactivity.

The medicine manufacturers make the point that the additives have been approved by their relevant professional bodies, and that in the quantities present in Calpol and other children’s medicines they are unlikely to have an adverse effect.

I don’t know how you feel about this, but I, for one, am extremely grateful for any signs of hyperactivity over a sick, sad, miserable child slumped on the sofa fighting off the effects of tonsillitis.