As actress Jenny Seagrove tucked away the box of detergent in the cupboard beneath the sink of her character’s suburban semi, a frisson of excitement passed through the crowd seated around me at Milton Keynes Theatre on Monday. “OMO!” they chorused, as if greeting a long-lost friend. Julie Godfrey certainly knew how to press the 1960s buttons in her designs for Hugh Whitemore’s play Pack of Lies.

Until that moment, I hadn’t paused to consider that this once top-selling washing powder is no longer with us — in Britain, at least, though Unilever still uses the brand name abroad. Did the name get jacked because of its similarity to a pejorative term for a gay man — a victim to an unwelcome association in the same way, say, as Vat 69 whisky and the slimming pill Aids?

Advertisements for the powder (“OMO adds brightness to whiteness”) surrounded me during my childhood in the 1950s and 60s. They were part of the wallpaper of life, at least as important in defining the time in my mind now as the pop songs of the period. Driving back from Milton Keynes, Rosemarie and I found ourselves recalling some of the other products of those days and, in some cases, slogans used in their advertising.

My co-pilot was first off with the all-purpose cleaning product Handy Andy, which she remembered as “the strong little gentleman”. The slogan in my mind was the slightly later: “You’re so handy, Andy.”

‘Toilet soaps’ (as they’re no longer called) were next with “Cadum for madam”, Knight’s Castile and Camay (“Get a little lovelier each day with Camay”).

I remembered (though never used) the men’s hair product that wasn’t Brylcreem or (remember it?) Silvikrin. Yes, I mean Trugel — or was it Tru-Gel? I recall its boasts if not its name: “A little bead is all you need” and “Doesn’t stain pillows and chair backs”.

Soon we were on to sweets. We both shouted “Murrymints, the too good to hurry mints” before I soloed on “Sharp’s, the word for toffee.” (How I clamoured for badges bearing that legend!) Then it was advanced level stuff with the Galaxy advert that began: “The lights are going out all over Europe . . . everyone is doing the Galaxy dark room test.” What that? The invitation to perform a personal blind tasting of Galaxy and the leading chocolate brand and see which was better. I appear to be the only person who remembers this short-lived campaign, and I sometimes ask myself whether I might have dreamt it.

The same is not true of “I drink Idris when I’s dri” or the memorable Mackeson claim — delivered by farmer Ted Moult, I think: “It looks good; it tastes good; and, by golly, it does you good.” I always wondered if this was the same as the “milk stout” so often ordered in those days by the hair-netted Ena Sharples in the bar of Coronation Street’s Rover’s Return. It didn’t appear to do her much good.

Products intended to contribute to health and longevity led on to “Keeps your cat a kitten cat”, which we guessed must have been Kit-e-Kat. My offering of “Trill — makes budgies bounce with health” reduced us both to hoots of laughter at the vision of all those avian ups and downs.

Finally, as we moved to products even then deemed inimical to health, I offered a good number of long-forgotten cigarette brands. Besides the one everyone recalls, “You’re never alone with a Strand”, I came up straightaway with Cadets, Escort, Guards, Bristol, Passing Clouds, Three Tuns, Player’s Bachelor Tipped, Kensitas (coupons with these, long before Embassy) Craven A, Du Maurier and Olivier (both named in honour of famous actors) and Richmond.

“Today’s cigarette is a Richmond.” they used to say.

But not tomorrow’s.