"First Class Cycling...."

"... with Alpecin, caffeine sham-pugh."

She keeps on saying it, whoever she is - I thought it was Mariella Frostrup at first, but now I am having my doubts. At first is used to annoy me, but now LLB and I chorus along with her every time, competing to get the exact way she pronounces sham-pew. Sham-puh. Nope, still not quite right.

Does anyone know whose voice is saying those words, in the UK ad for Alpecin?

And does anyone know how the stuff is supposed to work?

Caffeine is supposed to help you perk up, wake up, be more alert: how does that relate to hair, I wonder? I don't know about you, but I don't particularly want my hair rushing around like a mad thing saying "Comb me! Style me!"  and nagging me to go to a proper hairdresser for a proper cut for the first time since August 2008. (I cut it myself now - I hate hairdressers, all that faff and chat for what need only be a five-minute operation, snip snip there you are, done.) Hair is, after all, dead once it leaves your scalp (good thing too, imagine how painful it would be if your hair were alive, ergh) so nothing you apply to it can have any effect on the structure of the hair, other than removing dirt and smoothing the cuticles of the hair to make it feel silkier. *runs fingers through own tresses in satisfaction*

I seem to remember that when we first heard that Alpecin were coming into pro cycling as a sponsor, I looked them up and found out it was a hair restoring product - and they were linked with Trek at the time. Ah, how things change.

But it does seem odd that a product to restore men's hair should be sponsoring what is basically a young man's sport....