Why the British love Henry Hoover

What’s so endearing about Henry? It’s been the question on everybody’s lips since he spectacularly photobombed the unveiling of the new Downing Street press room. The friendly faced vacuum cleaner still manages to compete with the likes of Dyson forty years after he was first created. Made in Chard, Somerset, with his bowler hat shaped ‘cap’ and smiley face, Henry is arguably one of the last remaining bastions of British eccentricity.  

Henry is that rare thing in British culture – a domestic appliance that transcends class. As Grayson Perry pointed out in his excellent series All in the Best Possible Taste, the British have a propensity to imbue ordinary household objects with all sorts of thinly veiled social codes. Just as patched up clothes and clapped out cars are the language of the upper classes, Smeg kettles, Le Creuset dishes and heavily branded Land Rovers are beloved by the aspirational middle classes, keen to signal their status through labels.