Out-of-date medicine still effective ‘if you take it quickly’

Medical News: Out-of-date medicine is still effective if you take it quickly, insisted mother of three Helen Helm yesterday when guests began to mock the amount of painkillers and Calpol that expired at the beginning of the century stacked up at the back of her bathroom cupboard.

Helen, 39, who’s science-defying assertion was made quickly, while not looking anyone in the eye and almost shutting the cupboard door on someone’s fingers, admitted later that she’d been ‘meaning to clear out those shelves for years’ – though she still stuck by her statement.

“The effectiveness just slows down. That’s why if you take it quickly, it still works, and that’s the reason I haven’t thrown it all away. Some of us are actually trying to do their bit for the environment.”

Helen, who was having old friends round for dinner that she ‘hardly ever sees’ and ‘doesn’t really like anymore’, was giving them a tour round the house when old school mate Katherine Cooper started ‘nosing about’ in her bathroom.

“She picked up a tube of arnica and said ‘2007!’ and then she found this bottle of Pepto-Bismol and did one of her stupid laughs before showing everyone that it expired in 2001.”

“It’s not like food. You don’t just bin it the day it goes off. That’s why they don’t give it away to tramps.”

Story: Jasper Gibson