There are two kinds of supermarket shelves: the dead ones (salt), and the ones that look like a minor religion formed around them (toilet paper). 

There is a rush to differentiate toilet paper brands. Not sure what that is about but toilet paper is one of the healthiest retail shelves – many brands from many small companies trying to win customers, and one big name that has money to advertise toilet paper on TV as everyone else’s arch-enemy.

As a result, we have the unfinishable toilet roll – so thin that they can sell a roll three times longer than the others, the kilo brand which says it doesn’t matter which version of their toilet paper you like it’s always one kilo in the box, we have varying sheet size, softness, thickness, layer variations between one and five and perfume choice rivaling a high street perfumery.

But there is more. You can buy a four pack, a single roll, an eight or a sixteen pack. There is toilet paper for sensitive butts, toilet paper for “real men”, and toilet paper certified bio. Recycled paper toilet paper comes in lovely shades of earthy light browns, and, at the very bottom range of prices, there is also, still surviving, the real toilet paper, brown or pink paper that is so creasy and makeshift it can be used for party decoration, given enough scissor mastery.

Skillfully merchandised, and placed at eye level, is the aspirational toilet paper. It promises cotton like sensations, even more, wiping your ass with “a cloud like softness”. There is also the one sheet toilet paper, a brand that promises such a luscious anal gliding that you’ll be one in done go with one sheet, that’s it.

Japanese paper made for the most expensive nibs has nothing on the marketing of the top shelf toilet paper.