• The government saw fit to spend good money on a campaign dedicated to stopping people spitting.
• The desperation in the eyes of the errant spitter they used as an example to us all.

What happened?
Do Not Spit emerged as an obsession when I was very small - somewhere around four years old as best I can remember. In our house was a little wooden cabinet, which never seemed to serve any purpose as there was never anything in it. For some reason, one day, a small poster appeared on it. The poster depicted an appalled looking gentleman covering his mouth with one hand, and the legend "DO NOT SPIT". Strangely, the same message was also repeated in six other languages.
Do Not Spit confused me and my sister for several years, before disappearing. We had no idea where the message had appeared from, or why. Was God telling us not to spit? And, after spreading the word on spitting, where had it gone? Following the vanishing of the Do Not Spit man, I more or less forgot about it. Then, a couple of years ago, I suddenly remembered. That message had evidently become ingrained somewhere in my brain, and I just had to check the desperate man had really gone away. A quick visit to my parent's house, and there was the cabinet, just like I always remembered it. The door was held shut with a little twist of wallpaper jammed in the top. A quick yank, and the paper was free. The door yawned open, and there he was, in all his red and ivory glory. The same slightly unhinged, staring eyes. The same hand pressed over the same mouth, as if to stifle an irrepressible, uncontrollable, visceral urge to carry out the forbidden act. The face of a man who can barely control his desperate need to spit, but knows that he's going to have to, at least if he wants to avoid incurring the wrath of the mysterious signwriter. The face of a man, perhaps, who has drunk too much at a wedding, and is now trying to avoid projectile vomiting over the bride's Grandmother. A close look at the sign revealed the unhinged genius behind it: The Health Education Council. They don't exist any more, having been replaced by the Health Development Agency. Naturally, I've since been in touch with the HDA, though I am not holding my breath for a response.
Having spent a few minutes staring in awed silence at the great work, I closed the door, reinserted the paper, and quizzed my parents about why they actually had the damn thing in the first place. Their explanations weren't exactly great but for what it's worth:

Mum: Recalled that Dad had got it from somewhere on the vague pretext that he liked it. Maybe obsession runs in the male line. Apparently he stuck it to the cabinet because he couldn't find anywhere else, then when she finally tired of looking at it (after about five years), he didn't want to sling it (understandably), so he did the only sensible thing and moved it to the inside of the useless cabinet. Dad, HMIM salutes you.

Dad: Recalled that he got it from somewhere on the vague pretext that he liked it. Stuck it to the cabinet because he couldn't find anywhere else...etc. After a bit of probing (verbally), the full story came out. Apparently the government had distributed them to schools in the 80's when he was working as a teacher. He recalled there being hundreds of them, spitting being a social evil apparently occupying the mind of Big Brother at the time. Tantalisingly, he also thought there had been others in the series, although sadly, these have now been lost in the mists of time.

• Can anyone else remember Do Not Spit?
• Can anyone else remember any of the other offerings from this campaign?
   

Play Along at Home
This is a tricky one. Maybe if we all scour second hand shops, someone out there will turn up another Do Not Spit man? And, of course, we can all honour the principle by restraining our urge to coat our surroundings with sticky gob.