A silence as deep as the Marianas Trench has fallen over the lofty, snow-capped towers, battlements, crenelations and machicolations of Lord McKelvey’s vast West Sussex mansion as I trudge wearily up one of the dozens of spiral, servants’ staircases somewhere in the deep and gloomy fastnesses of the west wing, my way lit only by the wavering light of my antiquated mobile telephone.
The slithering drag of my ancient slippers, the ratchety, split-bellows wheeze of my fag-addled lungs, the occasional rifle-shot ‘pop’ of an aged knee and the lonely hooting of a sex-crazed barn-owl somewhere in the dark woods above on the Downs is all that can be heard.
It is a night with no moon.
I pass door after door, some impassably low and nailed shut, some with cracks, gaps and knotholes that might allow me to peep inside, had I the courage to do so, one surrounded by terrible scorch marks, another glued shut with tar or bitumen.
It is a night humming with the sense of something horrible about to manifest.
I pull myself up to lean, finally, exhausted, against the last door, breathing heavily onto the filthy, ancient, smoke-blackened oak, and my breath reveals a glint of metal. Raising my quivering i-phone, I rub the surface to reveal a small, cloudy, pitted brass plate.
By angling the faltering beam, I make out the words CAVE HIBERNICO and suppress a bitter laugh.
It is indeed wise to ‘beware the Irishman’.
I push against the door, which creaks and screams as it opens to reveal a small octagonal chamber, lit by scores of guttering candles, their flames flickering and dancing in the bitter wind that howls through the arrow-slits,
In the centre of the floor, tiled to form a crude black and white spiral stands a small plinth. On the plinth is an uncertain shape, draped in moth-eaten damask. With sudden courage I pull away the tattered cloth letting it fall to the wintry floor from my, ancient, icy fingers.
A small, early 21st century laptop device glows and hums.
Alas, it is time for me to review this year’s Xmas telly ads.
I light a small, tightly-twisted roll-up, crack my frozen knuckles, exhale a vast plume of yellowish smoke and begin…
Readers of a certain age may need to imagine Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman counting these down…
So, yes, the Venus Flytrap thing. A frustrating aspect of ‘X’ (formerly twitter) is that one sees a thing and then it is lost in the hail of opinion. I read a critique there of this advertisement from a Trotskyist perspective. where the child nurturing the rapacious, all-consuming vegetation represents the working classes and ‘Snapper’ the carnivorous greenery is capitalism itself. It made sense at the time. I quite like Andrea Bocelli’s warbling of ‘La Vita e Una Festa’ (Italian sub chk sp) which accompanies the incomprehensible meta-fable but really JLP, having moved the account from Adam & Eve to Mother amid much brouhaha have exchanged one smart, fashionable agency with a reputation for ‘understanding the consumer’ for another smart, fashionable agency with a reputation for ‘understanding the consumer’. Much good may it do them. I would have loved to have been in the meeting when the concept was approved. The CGI is also shoddy.
Pity the poor creatives tasked with making something interesting out of a brief to ‘show the bloody store and make a hero of the staff and oh some food would be good too’. They have risen to the task by utilising the tried and tested ‘appealing child + Santa + national treasure’ gambit, or, as my father would have said, ‘throwing money at it’. The result? A toe-curling combination of precocious lisping teacher’s pet, speculation as to the feeding habits of an imaginary being, a structure held together by achingly dull ‘performances’ from (perhaps) real Sainsbury’s staff and a baffling cameo from Rick ‘Rick’ Astley. Add the chillingly banausic strapline, ‘good food for all of us’ and you have the epitome of all that is lazy and worthless in current consumer advertising.
Oh no! By the salty, boiling tears of Satan, its only Kevin The Cocking Carrot. Again. I have enjoyed the critical savaging of Timothée Chalomet’s performance in the just-released prequel to Charlie and The Chocolate Factory (and am looking forward to seeing my old classmate Hugh Grant’s Oompa Loompa (sub chk sp). Perhaps Timothée should have approached Kevin for notes? I had lost the will to live before the end of the first couplet of McGonnagalesque versification. Something about Billy Conker, selfish rhubarb, a greedy grape, on and on it goes, a thundering juggernaut of artful animation, on to its epic conclusion which encourages children not to be selfish and to share nicely. The craft skills on display are astonishingly accomplished but the whole thing is desperately sad, though not as sad as the fact that squishy, plushy Kevins sell out faster than they can be manufactured. A true vision of Xmas Hell.
It is not a long way from Jefferson Airplane’s hallucinatory ‘White Rabbit’ to singing oven gloves, though the musical decline from that sixties masterpiece to ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’ by their descendants (by way of Jefferson Starship) Starship is a horrible thing to witness.
So, yes, singing oven gloves. No celebrities, reasonable CGI costs, presumably all ‘done in post’, and I can’t think that the rights to this appalling ‘power ballad’ (remember that classification?) were THAT punitively expensive. I would guess that the client got excellent value for money here so top marks all round – though Ramsbottom, the snake from The Sooty Show has a very strong case against the supermarket for ‘passing off’.
Whenever Lord McKelvey sends me the Xmas Telly Ads to review, I write notes for myself in order to help my feeble old mind retain the various, monstrous eruptions of late-stage, global capitalism.
I think this was my least favourite of all of these frankly ghastly efforts, so in the interests of sustainability (always an excellent excuse for laziness) I here reproduce those notes in full:
Racoon! Sodding stuffed monkey is lost! Dog-pal. Why America? Oh god. Why?
I think I can justify reviewing M&S Food and M&S Home and Clothing in one go. So, for M&S Food here’s Dawn French as the Xmas fairy godmother or some such and here’s Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny as a pair of magic mittens in an execution as confusing as their purchase of Wrexham FC. Why magic mittens? Why the peculiar ‘back-story’ that is unresolved except by the provision of impossibly glossy Xmas food. I don’t think anyone comes out of this well. But remember, this is not just food, this is M&S Xmas food! How I weary of it. Meanwhile in the beige trouser and tea-set department here’s a ‘host of stars’, none of whom I recognised, except perhaps Sophie Ellis-Bextor for whom I have always had a soft spot. I think the creative team have decided to address head on on to the perceived greigeness of the high-street stalwart with a storyline that involves well-dressed people NOT doing dull Xmassy things. I think that’s the gist of it. It ends with the cryptic statement ‘Do only what you love this Xmas’. Recent news of the retailer’s improving sales figures surely cannot be related to this pair of expensive incoherent advertisements. Oh and Meatloaf gets crucified too.
This jolly little film shows the great British public turning into Xmassy things, such as a tree, a snowman a pudding, a snow-globe, an elf, or a reindeer. The more visits each makes to their local Tesco superstore, the ‘Xmassier’ their transformations become, the tree, for example, sprouting lights, tinsel and the like. Jollity prevails but not in the cold and, stony heart of the family’s difficult teenager’ who displays only contempt for the seasonal mood until he too is seduced and transformed into a tree like his Papa, by what looks to me like a pastry decoration. I promise I am not making this up. Charmingly accompanied by that world-famous Kiwi mega-band, Otara Millionaire’s Club warbling their nineties chart-topper ‘How Bizarre’ in an endearingly jangly manner. How bizarre indeed! But do you see? The more of Tesco’s Christmassy produce you consume, the more Christmassy you will be. A triumph of the planner’s art!
This thing takes the number 3 slot mainly because my kid sister loves the fact that Michael is ‘such a good port about it all and does not take himself at all seriously’. And of course, for many people Xmas isn’t Xmas without him. In fairness, his jolly good sportiness does just about ensure that the whole thing hangs together – because otherwise it’s an unintelligible muddle of brand proof points focusing on lovely Xmas things but most importantly, charmingly downbeat ‘relatable’ staff members. In a cost-effective move, they have also made a few different executions, my favourite being the one where the Bublé himself uses the megastore tannoy to demand a ‘clean-up in aisle 5’. As I’m sure people will say as they haul their racks of lager and cases of advocaat out into the ASDA carpark, ‘the man’s a legend!’
I am reviewing this because I do not understand it at all. I think that the premise is: if you are a young person, interested in sport then the Sports Direct store will help you to achieve your ambitions. Soundtracked by a re-imagining of ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World by Bath’s synthpop legends and po-faced twerps Tears For Fears (Now revised to ‘Everybody Loves This Time Of Year) – it features engaging, chirpy young people sporting merrily about and (I think though I recognise not one) triumphing over genuine sports stars who, like dear Michael Bublé above, are all being jolly good sports about losing to the gleeful urchins. Despite my loathing for TFF, I do remember being much taken with their breakout single ‘Mad World’ when I was working at my first post-university job as a ‘German-speaking’ telephone researcher for IMR at Hanger Lane while living in a spectacularly miserable bed-sit in Richborough Road, Cricklewood, just off Shoot-Up Hill, in or around 1982. I had a tiny transistor radio, generally tuned to Radio 3 but would occasionally encounter the gloomy TFF dirge, which, to me at the time seemed to chime perfectly with what I was calling ‘My Life’. Hence vertiginous height of this commercial’s chart position. Come on young people! Do sporty things! All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.
What is it with the creative departments of London advertising agencies and eighties synthpop? Perhaps Depeche Mode have a large tax bill that needs paying? Who knows? The cheery Essex S&M enthusiasts’ mega-hit ‘Just can’t Get Enough’ bleeps it’s jaunty way through this heart-warming commercial as everyone at the party gets stuck into spendy food and over-priced seasonal bubbles in a multi-cultural, diverse and inclusive manner. It also has Graham Norton twinkling away and blithering on about ‘caramel shards’ or some such. There may be other famous people who I don’t recognise in there too.
But why? I hear you ask, dear reader. Why is this anodyne good-time Gertie of a Xmas advertisement topping the prestigious and eagerly-awaited Decision Marketing chart this year? Well, it is because it contains a line of proper advertising perfection. The party is in full swing, the noise abatement officers have been won over with chocolate-orange infused panettone, Xmas success sems assured when, oh horror! There is a power cut! Whereupon our central, female protagonist utters the soon-to-be-immortal, Xmas advertising defining line:
“It’s OK everyone, there’s more cheese!”
Oh yes, with Xmas telly advertising you can be absolutely certain that there will always be MORE CHEESE.