Rich beyond our wildest dreams

but only in Stupid TV Advertland

I’ve watched more television in the last couple of weeks than I would normally do in a couple of months.

Don’t look at me like that!

It doesn’t mean that I’ve watched 18 hours of TV a day, just means I’ve been watching more than usual daily average of one hour.OK?

I said OK???

Good, glad we got that sorted.

Anyway, TV adverts.

My God folks, we, the British people are blessed.

In years to come we shall be sitting in the pub nursing our half-pints of Mild (or, in my case, half-pints of Pimm’s) muttering about how much funnier the adverts used to be when we were mere striplings.

And yes my friends, the adverts we have on televisions these days are funny; pure comedy gold.

There are currently eight TV adverts vying for top spot in the Stupidest TV Advert of All Time Chart.

These are (in no particular order):
‘The teeth-grindingly awful piece of television that is an advert for a loans/credit company – the one where the annoyingly chirpy (considering she’s heavily in debt) modern-day mother warbles all kind of nonsense in a north-eastern England accent whilst she’s simultaneously applying for a loan of (to me) absolutely scary proportions with a non-High Street lender (so yeah, the family credit rating must be way down the toilet). ‘Josh, yer Dad’s found yer scootah!’, she trills just before she says to the loan company ‘Really? That’s a lot less than we’re paying now!’ Good grief. Just what kind of indebted two-point-four-children, post-nuclear families do the writers of this 30-second sitcom think inhabit the rest of the country?

‘The hilarious advert for a well-known chain of IT Superstores where our heroine enters an IT warehouse and says to a smartly dressed, non-spotty, non-nerdy, relatively geekless sales assistant: ‘I’d like to change my computer for something more modern… ‘ (is it only me that finishes the sentence with the words ‘like a multiple setting, variable speed nine-inch vibrator’?)

‘I know beauty products are easy prey but how about the advert for the well known shampoo that claims to deliver: ‘vitally alive hair’. Vitally alive hair? WTF? Look people, stay calm but here’s a news flash. Hair is dead – just like nails. If a product threatens to deliver ‘vitally alive hair’ it’s either lying or the stuff in the bottlecan raise the dead. You just have to decide which it is, ok?

‘Next is the Nokia 53000 advert, the one that encourages young people to listen to MP3s loudly on their mobile phones – without headphones plugged in! What?? Obviously no-one in Nokia’s marketing department has ever sat in a train carriage where three youths are listening to three mobile phones playing three different sets of MP3s – and all at competing volumes – at the same time. How surprising! Perhaps the marketeers should get out of their BMWs and live in the real world now and then, eh?

‘Coming up fast on the outside is the latest offering from Orange – the ‘Say what you want even when you’ve run out of credit’ advert. WTF? This bringsPay As You Go customers in to the ranks of the indebted toowith a lusty call that echoes around the country’s shopping malls “Now you can get in to debt with the phone company too!” How fantastic.

‘Then there’s the advert for the new Chrysler Sebring (except for some totally unexplained reason the stupid American voice-over insists on calling it See-Bring. If it was the See-Bring it would be spelt Seabring. Or maybe even Seebring. But Sebring spells Sebring, OK?) And why is it the new Sebring? WTF happened to the old one? Was that a sack of shite too or did it never even make it in pastproduction? Anyway, what the Stupid American Voice-over Man doesn’t do is add the usual postscript that everyone in Europe with a sense of flair does when they see the word ‘Chrysler’ – namely – the full advertising slogan: ‘Chrysler, the ugly motor car company’.

‘How about the advert for the product I affectionately call the ‘Stick this thing down the bog and it’ll make the air smell nice device’. You know, the advert where the boy sitting on the porcelain moped calls out very loudly ‘Poo, it really stinks’. Well you shouldn’t have such a smelly arse should you? How about eating a proper diet?

‘Also doing well in the ‘goat-getting’ department is the AA insurance advert where the mother picks up her blindingly thick and irritatingly-stupid, monosyllabic, loutish, layaboutish, chavvy son (hereafter known as Tom) and – as she drives Tom home – proceeds to tell him (by way of a two-handed conversation that she is forced toconduct with herself because Tom, sadly, lacks the everyday ability of coherent speech) that she managed to switch the car insurance. Online. As if switching car insurance ‘online’ is worthy of mentioning. It’s the 21st Century people. Wake up. And for the love of all that’s good woman – your ignorant little shite is in the car for less than 21 seconds! Has he lost the use of his legs or have you lost the use of your brain? Make the little b’stard walk! No wonder the country’s going down the drain quicker than a dose of Cillit Bang (‘Bang andyour brains are gone!’).

There are more, many more,but these are the top of the crop of my current love-to-hate crowd of ‘adverts written for the terminally inane’.

If there are any adverts that you’d like to do some spleen-venting about, feel free to add them via the comments box.

Perhaps, if we could get sponsorship, we could do an annual award via the web?

B.