It’s a depressing experience to watch TV advertising these days. Well, it always has been really, but I refer to a particular phenomenon, the re-appearance of rebel figures from one’s youth, selling their arses on TV for money. Remember 1976? – the excitement of punk emerging onto the music scene, these spotty youths who gave the finger to the establishment, were anti-everything and assaulted the nation’s delicate, Pink-Floyd mellowed ears with a wall of raucous, glorious, life-affirming noise. The sneering face of Johnny Rotten was a cultural icon of the time, as he snarled his way through Anarchy in the UK and God Save the Queen and told television interviewers that they were dirty old c****.
What’s he doing now? Well, last I heard, he is living in LA, possibly involved in the world of Estate Agentry. But he has still found time to advertise an English brand of butter. He can be seen cavorting around in his joke tweeds, grimacing and running from herds of cows, telling us how utterly delicious this particular butter is (don’t ask me what it is, the advert isn’t THAT good!) Creamery in the UK!
And Marco Pierre White – that enfant terrible of fine cuisine. He is flogging Knorr stock cubes and Morrison’s ready meals. What is the point of this type of advertising? I can understand why Marco and John are doing it (up to a point) – they want the cash, and that is the point where any previously held beliefs and standards go straight out the window. But can it be true that members of the public are so stupid as to believe that these characters are actually endorsing the products they advertise?? Or is it some kind of ironic joke that we are supposed to chuckle at, before trecking off to the supermarket and filling a trolley with butter and chicken tikka masala microwave meals, still chuckling to ourselves and winking knowingly at the checkout operatives?
At least there are still some people with principles (aren’t there?) I mean, we haven’t yet seen Germaine Greer telling us to go buy Nuts or Zoo, and Jamie Oliver has several years in him before he starts trying to sell us Turkey Twizzlers.
Bon appetit!
Maybe they are laughing at us on the inside, and still calling us dirty old wotsits, whilst they count their cash?
Personally I’d be careful about labelling someone like Jamie Oliver as someone with principles….
Of course they are, but they have still sold out big style. And as for Jamie, how dare you! – that man is a walking beacon of principles
If it wasn’t for him, some of us would still be eating chips for every meal and scrabbling in dustbins for old potato peelings and discarded cookery books. Besides, I only hinted that he hadn’t sold out… yet! OK, he is the lisping face of Sainsbury’s but that doesn’t necessarily fly in the face of anything else he espouses.
I am not saying he has sold out his principles, I am saying he never had any in the first place. lol
God bless St.Jamie’s campaigning to ban the junk in schools and for trying to get the little s**ts to eat fresh, tasty nutritious food instead. Think of how many poor little souls have been saved from certain obesity by sticking to his “healthy meals” regime.
I think the argument about principles is irrelevant – we should be asking ourselves if he’s not a good candidate for canonisation once he’s slipped the earthly bonds…..
I heartily agree. What a guy! He may even be the next Pope – bring on the Bread and wine for all schoolchildren!
So we congratulate him from trying to prevent Darwinism in action?