It happens less and less often - on the basis that I immediately mute or skip the adverts or simply watch the BBC - but every now and then I see an advert so awful I sit up, sharpen an imaginary pencil and say to myself: "Right." That's what happened when I watched this "She's Me Mum" Boots Advert. Well, after a few minutes of dry-heaving, anyway.
This Boots advert features something more and more prevalent in Christmas adverts: a relatable Christmas message (you hate your own Mother) and relatable (ie. terrible) singing. With lyrics that would unite the DUP and Sinn Fein in mutual hatred ("It was her; did you see? Standing there; by the tree") and with a voice scarcely less awful than Boris Johnson grunting his way to verbose orgasm, it's a truly grisly prospect.
And that affected 'me' instead of 'my' - because market research shows that Northern accents are more trustworthy? Just ugh.
That's before we get to the backing track, Robbie Williams' love song for people who don't like music, which we have to hear sung by some godawful community choir. It's only at this point, of course, that an entitled teenager understands that the woman who birthed her is a fully-functional, independent human being - it's OK for her to have emotions and she deserves some make-up after all. Merry Fucking Christmas.
This might be a message that resonates with you, but that's how advertising works, after all. It's a flat-out con trick, playing on your emotions to guilt you into buying some unwanted shit for someone in your family.
Whenever I point this out, people to whom this has obviously never occurred get very defensive and start telling me to 'lighten up' and it's 'only a bit of fun'. And I get why - if someone had just pointed out to me that I'd be had by some very obvious scam, I'd probably get defensive too.
Here's what Boots have to say about it: "We wanted to really celebrate this special connection by focusing in on the spirit of beauty gifts showing you really understand your loved ones.
The spirit of beauty gifts.
Let that sink in for a second. We all know about the spirit of Christmas. Love, forgiveness, selflessness. Peace on Earth. And buying a No7 lipstick for your Mum, who you normally despise. It's not exactly A Christmas Carol, eh?
No, instead we have "She's me Mum," and instead of Scrooge we have a brat who remembers not to hate her mother once a year thanks to Boots.
Thank God we have private-equity owned multinationals to tell us what, how and when to feel. That's the true meaning of Christmas - and the real spirit of beauty gifts.
Well, the last year flew by eh? Seems like just a few weeks since we were ready to go to TUI headquarters brandishing flaming torches and defaced copies of their brochures. And here we are again: time for the worst adverts of 2018.
Over the last year work and lifestyle changes mean I've watched less and less television - and so fewer adverts. That has the effect of insulating me from much of it, but being so much more aware of how dreadful some adverts are when they do make it through the mental shields I've developed over the years. Suffice to say over on Facebook and in the reader comments I am kept well abreast of the latest disasters.
2018 was perhaps the year when I felt most people in the country were able to understand the madness I have fleetingly experienced over the last ten years. As I write the government is stockpiling food and medicine - and spending £4bn on planning for a disastrous no-deal Brexit that it could simply rule out if it wanted to. Even the Leavers I know think the government has gone mad.
Welcome to the world of AdTurds; a world where you can't quite believe that no-one else seems to appreciate how insane everything is. Where you want to grab people in the street, shake them and scream in their face that they stop eating at Nando's, buying those stupid plastic coffee pods seemingly designed to pollute the world for ever, calling radio phone-ins and all the million-and-one other things that seem to speak of certifiable insanity.
Well, maybe they have a taste of my universe now. And if you don't, well the next 3,000 words on the worst adverts of 2018 might give you an insight into it. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. Enter at your own peril - for there may be no way back.
Worst Adverts Of 2018
Wrigley's Extra advert - Tom
See Chewing-Gum Tom in his bare-chested glory. He has just finished fingering your daughter. See him chewing mint-flavoured gum. See his fashionably floppy hair. See him standing only in his boxers, which hide a penis <...>hmm, penis...> that was until a few minutes ago interfering with your offspring in a particularly intimate manner.
Chewing-Gum Tom has already usurped you in the stakes of your child's affections. Now he openly challenges you, with his flat stomach and well-developed chest. Perhaps you are attracted to Chewing-Gum Tom on some level? No, no - there is only the Oedipal challenge he now presents. Forget about caressing his rock-hard abs >.
You must destroy Chewing-Gum Tom, like Saturn devouring his own son. If you do not strike now he will stand metaphorically astride your broken body, wielding the testes he has symbolically removed from your nether regions, steadily meeting your gaze and willing you to voice a breath of discontent at the terrible, unspoken subtext that passes between you ...sinking into those eyes like limpid pools of cool, cool water.... >.
Chewing-Gum Tom owns your Princess and his vigorous manhood oh dear Christ his penis, his erect penis...> is going to be at her like a frantic piston during a rash B-road overtaking manoeuvre - and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Kill Chewing-Gum Tom ...kiss Chewing-Gum Tom...>.
KILL HIM NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!
Just to be clear: the point of the advert is that Wrigleys Extra makes the girl’s dad fancy Tom, right? pic.twitter.com/WXmtWV3c3B
Perhaps the one thing that made the idea of imminent climate change apocalypse seem like it might not be such a bad thing, the Diet Coke Mango advert is truly a piece of appalling stupidity not even Nathan Barley could have gone there.
Maybe Diet Coke focus-grouped what vlog-loving, gibberish-tweeting, LOLing teenagers talk like and it happened to be as bereft of meaning as if they had just written down a load of old shite for a man wearing a 90s denim jacket to say anyway.
And maybe the people who took receipt of that research, having read its findings, realised that the game was up. That it had all been for nothing and that humanity was on the downward slope of a bell curve, skiing gleefully towards Idiocracy like a farmer voting for Brexit.
If the rise of Millennials has coined the term 'dawn of the dumb', this Diet Coke Mango advert is their simpleton soundtrack.
The sound of children singing is horrible. Children are shit at singing. Wiring plugs, claiming housing benefit, driving articulated lorries. All things kids are shit at - but we don’t make them do those things do we? So why do we have to make an exception for the little fuckers making a noise scarcely less awful than Donald Trump dragging his fingernails down a blackboard... then sexually molesting it like he would any given woman within lunging distance?
What’s that? You like the sound of your own kids singing? Course you do. You’re a slave to hormones in the same way those ants who’ve been parasitised by fungus are. Your kids could probably singing Catfish and the Fucking Bottlemen backwards and you’d wee yourself a little bit.
No, children cannot sing. But they can shriek feel-seeking emotional missiles straight at your cry glands. Sainsbury’s know this - so that’s what they have served up for your Christmas dinner: emotion raw as sushi, with lashings of sentimental sludge and a side-serving of the vague unease we rightly feel when we make precocious children sing and dance like adults.
Now off you go to buy your Taste The Difference goodies like the good little ants you are.
Halifax Ghostbusters advert
This Halifax Ghostbusters Advert is the advertising equivalent of defecating directly onto the faces of everyone involved in the original film. Here Bill Murray is replaced by Gareth, the stout Welsh chap who, not content with vomiting all over the Wizard Of Oz, now seems to be embarking on an all-out cultural rampage that will presumably end with him painting a cock into the Mona Lisa's mouth.
I'm guessing that it's no coincidence that Bill Murray is not involved - a man who, unlike Dan Akroyd, seems to be unimpressed by money and frivolity when it comes to his work. Harold Ramis, of course, did not have a choice whether he appeared in this genuinely upsetting spot, by handy virtue of being dead. There's an irony.
If you accept that some things would be beyond the pale on virtually any level - let's say dropping Gareth into Schindler's List to discuss life insurance, for example - then you accept that all such judgements are questions of degree. And if you have any sense you'd concede that everyone's red lines are set at different levels. Who are we to judge other people's red lines?
To see adverts like this is to look through your memories, the repository of stuff you like, and realise that every single bit of it is up for sale. And whether you like Ghostbusters or not, that's a frightening thought.
People literally begged me to make this advert stop, like when you see women in films who are so desperate to save their children they offer their bodies to Nazi soldiers. Flo and Joan are probably lovely people and in the right place - a Radio 4 comedy programme or some godawful hipster cafe I hopefully never have to visit - I have no problem with them.
But stick anything on television again and again - even Salma Hayek pouting or Tom Baker laughing or the Blake's 7 theme tune - and it's going to become hateful very quickly.
And if your song about a house is so twee it makes people pull the same face as when they bite on a lime segment, then expect hatred so strong it rivals Toby Young's utter hatred of himself for being a snivelling little cunt.
Boots - She's Me Mum advert
This Boots advert features something more and more prevalent in Christmas adverts: a relatable Christmas message (you hate your own mother) and relatable (ie. terrible) singing.
With lyrics that would unite the DUP and Sinn Fein in mutual hatred ("It was her; did you see? Standing there; by the tree") and with a voice scarcely less awful than Boris Johnson grunting his way to verbose orgasm, it's a truly grisly prospect.
Instead of Scrooge, we have a brat who remembers not to hate her mother once a year thanks to Boots. Thank God we have private-equity owned multinationals to tell us what, how and when to feel.
There was at least something going on in the initial Martin Freeman Vodafone adverts. Some semblance of the everyman character Freeman always portrays, railing against the inanity of modern telecommunications contracts and clumsily romancing a young lady through the medium of data-allowance banter.
In some respects it was, I guess, vaguely relatable and not completely obnoxious. But like a mince pie discovered at the bottom of a bread-bin long after Christmas is over and done with, this series seems stale, over-familiar and thoroughly unwanted.
The repetition is one thing, but this advert is possibly the least inspired 60 seconds that has ever had the misfortune of being committed to a memory card. Not even a regional disc jockey could find this amusing; not even Freeman's wife could muster an iota of respect for him going through with it; surely even his young children must openly despise him for what he's done. Benedict Cumberbatch will surely slap him right across his oh-so-rich-now face when next they meet.
Freeman strikes me as one of the least annoying celebrities on the overexposure circuit (cf. Lauren Laverne, Ben Wishaw, Olivia Coleman) but this utterly uninspired advert - what's it even about? something about no coverage, then he goes ice-skating? - is so bereft of even the most infinitesimal iota of inspiration that it's basically an insult to the very idea of advertising, storytelling or Torvill & Dean.
That fucking dilly dilly Budweiser advert
This one is pure concentrated evil. It’s for Bud Light, a drink only MAGA-hat wearers actually imbibe, once everyone else has grown out of drinking this sugary piss at the age of 14.
The ‘makes stuff turn into product’ idea has, of course, been mined by Skittles for years now so it seems odd to lift the idea. And not just the general concept. Even the theme of this superpower being akin to some sort of curse to be endured is repeated wholesale here, just in a way that isn’t remotely funny.
And then ‘dilly dilly’: a sort of medieval ‘Wasaaaaaaaap!’ for genuine morons to rally around - whether ironically or not - when they meet in the sort of IKEA-fitted bars that actually serve shite like Bud Light, to bring together their few, meagre sugar-soaked brain cells and talk shit about sport, cars and how Brexit would be going alright if it only they’d put Boris in charge.
Oral B advert
On the face of it there's nothing of the nuclear-level awfulness to compare with the rest of this list in this Oral B advert. There's a couple of very gratuitous shots of the actress' bum and of her jiggling about a bit - and yes there's the usual simpering smugness that goes with toothpaste adverts. But next to Diet Coke, Boots or Halifax? No, simply not in the same league.
That's until you get to the line 'I didn't even know Oral B made a toothpaste'. And it's hard to pinpoint exactly why this is so aggravating. Perhaps i's the fact that everyone knows Oral B makes toothpaste and the rank disingenuousness of pretending anyone in the mind might not know.
What, exactly, are Oral B known for, if not for toothpaste? Pizza? Price-comparison services? Over-50s life insurance? And what, exactly, does the name Oral B suggest beyond dental hygiene? No, don't answer that.
Perhaps what's so annoying is that truly no-one on this planet gives a fuck whether Oral B do make toothpaste or not, nor does anyone care what Oral B get up to. They can shove toothpaste up their arses for all I care - and for all I know, they do.
Sun Bingo Advert
If fairness the couplet 'got fake tits? / but are you gonna bingo'? is perhaps the most on-point bit of work ever seen in an advert. And what an advert it is. It's worth bearing in mind that this is an advert for playing online bingo - on your own, in your bedroom on a fucking mobile phone - on The Sun's website. The tragedy of that mental image.
Sun. Bingo. Is it hard to imagine a more disastrous confluence than those two words? Chernobyl McDonalds? Jacob Rees-Trump? Piers Morgan? An appalling meeting of minds between the mindless: a profoundly, proudly stupid newspaper publishing content halfway between The Beano, Pornhub and Mein Kampf; a pastime that requires the mental faculties of a Krispy Kreme doughnut.
To be fair, as a proud Northerner, I don't really have a problem with bingo. It's that S** bit. Stick that word in front in front of anything and it conjures up a Coldwar Steve world of terrifying awfulness.
Sun Orgasm. Sun Holidays. Sun Heaven. See? Even if you can't really discern what they might involve you just know it will be awful: a warm-lager, faded-seaside, racist-by-instinct, smartphone-nudes, fast-food, homophobic, GMTV, zero-hours, Primark version of anything you can imagine - with a guffawing cockney soundtrack.
Amazon Christmas advert
I don't know why Amazon don't simply have a video of Jeff Bezos touring around the third world torching everything organic he comes across with a flamethrower. That's all I can see whenever I see a box with Amazon branding, or their horrorshow website - the very concept of a world based around buying crap for the sheer hell of it. 'Shit for cunts' as one meme I've spotted on the internet has it.
The fucking nerve of Amazon whitewashing the genuine hideousness of working in one of their George Orwell workhouses, where people piss themselves because they're so afraid of getting sacked for having a toilet break, genuinely beggars belief.
Still, so much of our concept of Christmas is based around Victoriana, so it makes sense that the pre-eminent business of our time is merrily bringing back working conditions that could only be described as Dickensian. If that doesn't make you feel genuinely upset and a little bit frightened then I'm worried for you.
Maybe that's just life in the Broken Britain of 2018 - but pretending that Amazon warehouses are some sort of winter wonderland is the most grotesque dishonesty I've seen in Adland this year.
Diet Coke advert - Yurt and athleisure
"If you want a Diet Coke, have a Diet Coke."
That's it? That's the pay-off to this sequence of dissonant Millennial brain-shart? Is this what William Shakespeare died for? Is that what a medium-sized Colombian cocaine-harvest produced? 'Have a Diet Coke - because you can'?
In this Diet Coke advert, filled with meaningless, unconnected phrases that still manage to come off as deeply affected and hatefully hip, what appears to be a similar dynamic has birthed perhaps the most obnoxiously dumb 30 seconds in existence.
More nauseating than Trump boasting of grabbing women by their parts; more smug than Piers Morgan announcing he has won the Euromillions rollover; more thoroughly awful than Nigel Farage laughing while doing a shit in your bath, the Diet Coke advert is a Soho/Manhattan nightmare of vacant stupidity that literally has no meaning. You are trapped in it and there is no escape.
Ever wanted to live in a yurt? Wear athleisure every day? It’s time to do whatever you want, whenever you want. Why? Because you can. Be the first to see our new TV ad here. pic.twitter.com/Ij7xLdEAhN
And you thought the Brexit vote divided the country.... well, those shouty people outside Parliament have nothing on AdTurds readers. When I asked what the worst advert of 2018 was I might as well have opened the floodgates to one of those frightening ponds full of radioactive shit at Sellafield while standing directly in front of it. Because I don't just have to pore over the torrents of frustrated fury - I have to watch all the adverts.
Talking of Brexit, people don't like me to. Talk about Brexit, that is. And I get that. They probably come here to be amused (I'd like to think) rather than find someone else blabbing on about whatever the backstop is, Theresa May's haunted-tree face and Jacob Fucking-Rees, Twatting-Mogg - a man who resembles a Staedtler 2B pencil that hates poor people in a suit and seems to have more punctuation in his name than most undergraduate essays.
But I think in this Sun Bingo advert, which you voted the worst advert of 2018, there is a metaphor for Brexit. People who are angry about leaving the European Union - whether because it's happening at all, or might not happen, or isn't happening fast enough - have projected all their dissatisfactions, their grievances, fear, anger and disgust onto Brexit.
It's become an issue that I think has lost all meaning - it's just something to transfer anxieties onto, all the grubby little things we think are wrong with the country, whichever side of the debate we're on.
And that's what this Sun Bingo advert is. It's everything British people hate about Britain. It's cheap, vulgar, stupid, ugly. It's probably the sort of thing Brexiteers voted against and it's everything Remainers think Brexiteers are. In that regard, the Sun Bingo advert has united everyone. If only Parliament could do that.
This is the awesome power of the Sun Bingo advert. An advert that looked at genuine monstrosities, such as either Diet Coke advert, and shat them. Either of them. Take your pick; either flavour, whether "Yurt It Up" or "Supergood", has the potential to genuinely make adults cry.
I'm not even joking - I bet somewhere, someone was genuinely moved to tears of impotent frustration by how awful these adverts were. Some will say that having two Diet Coke adverts in the pack split the vote but what else was I supposed to do? It would be like not trying Goering at Nuremberg just because you'd also caught Himmler.
I could legitimately have included two Halifax adverts on the same basis, but the desecration of Ghostbusters just struck me as so obviously evil. Still, Sun Bingo triumphed. Just parse that. There was a worse advert in 2018 than the Halifax advert that crapped all over Ghostbusters for the sheer hell of it.
And, God bless them, Flo & Joan. I can't bring myself to dislike them and I can only think how excited they probably were to be on an advert and sing their godawful song. Then again, if I had to listen to that song ever again I might wish any number of obscene things upon them involving that keyboard being turned sideways and inserted into an orifice even smaller than their tiny house. However, even they could not withstand Sun Bingo.
Sun Bingo looms over the country like a referendum that has torn the country apart. Only worse. At least, one way or the other, Brexit will be over one day. But no-one who has seen the Sun Bingo advert will ever forget it.
Like walking in on Richard Keys wanking, it can't be unseen and we will never be free of it. Sun Bingo is the worst advert of 2018.
When I asked which adverts are currently getting on peoples tits, people told me about this Carling advert. It wasn't just getting on their tits, they said, it was rubbing itself over whatever genitalia they might possess. And not in a good way. So I was compelled to seek it out.
I’m a beer drinker but I can drink lager. On a hot, sunny there is, perhaps, nothing better than a good pilsner. But there are good lagers and bad lagers. And Carling is one of the worst, even if it is made in Britain.
Yes, the brewery at Burton draws its water from a deep artesian well, probably the best water in the country for making beer. But if you’re going to turn that water into something as foul as Carling you might as well pump in whatever seeps from the pooling tanks at Sellafield. We make a lot of nuclear waste in this country too, but I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of.
The days of those cheery, cheeky and genuinely funny "I bet he drinks Carling Black Label' adverts are long gone. And more's the pity. I don't know why adverts for lager don't even attempt to funny anymore - they seem to have been replaced with a try-hard earnestness.
In this new "Made Local" Carling advert we get one of the 'roll-call' ads that tries to be all things to all, well, people. Maybe the fragmented market and a new generation of supermarket drinkers make that inevitable, but it's certainly been to the detriment of advertising.
Lager has rarely been sold on flavour or desirability. More the associations with nights in the pub, friends, good times. And that makes sense because the vast majority of lager is total shite.
Let me try and describe how Carling tastes to me: gas - as in the actual stuff that comes out of your hob - mixed with sugar and injected with, well, more gas. And more sugar. It makes you feel bloated, it will give you a stinking hangover and God forbid you try to drink the stuff unless it's chilled to the point where most of its chemical-works flavour has been mercifully nullified.
In mainland Europe, America and beyond most people drink two schooners of beer and call it a bender. Here we're gluttons for punishment. It's not a sesh until we've drunk ten pints of the stuff, fallen over, been sick and then fallen over in the sick. And that's on a Wednesday.
And, dear Lord, the associations. It's fair to say lager has never had a great image, stretching back to the 80s, when it was invented by Margaret Thatcher and Jeff Banks. Whether because of the rioting, racism or just plain, good, old-fashioned bank holiday loutishness, lager would probably be placed probably somewhere between the E4 programme Coach Trip and the abuse of nitrous oxide on a list of How High Is Your Opinion Of This?
It's possible to identify correlations between very unlikely things. One enterprising chap, for example, has tracked the geography of Pret outlets to Brexit voters. And a couple of years back YouGov opened up its vast database for nerds like me to play about with - from which I made the discovery that you can track how right-wing you are according to which car you drive.
It may or may not come as a surprise to learn that Land Rover drivers are the most right-wing on the roads, so much so they think Jacob Rees-Mogg is a lentil-wearing pansy and most specify Union Jack underpants, Katie Hopkins talking books and portable gallows with their pointlessly big cars that never go offroad (for what it's worth Fiats are the most left-wing cars).
Which brings me back to Carling. Were I to place Carling somewhere on the Brexit spectrum I'd expect to hear it phoning LBC to start ranting about a No Deal. I'd imagine it shouting "You're a traitor!" at Anna Soubry, in a hi-viz jacket, while streaming live on Facebook.
Which makes this Carling advert a bit puzzling.
I applaud the multicultural vision of Britain offered in this Carling advert, the inclusivity and outward-looking attitude. The rainbow laces (and the inclusion of Black Country Fusion - an "LGBT inclusive" team) are interesting. Obvious enough to those who understand what they signify, but probably sufficiently oblique that anyone who might spit their teeth out at the idea of say, scissoring, might just think ‘what a lovely colourful pair of shoelaces’.
Fair play to Carling - but I doubt we're going to see two men having a kiss and a cuddle while sipping their fizzy pint of piss. This is the reason you scarcely ever see two men having a drink alone in any beer and lager commercials over the last 30 or so years - people might think they're gay.
And we have some women in Anfield boxing. Good for them. And more life in the small towns around the country. I suppose the idea of is to herald locally-made stuff and apparently there's a series of short films about these communities. But without context this advert just seems like another Great Great Britain! box-ticking exercise, not far off one of those lager / betting / fast food adverts that comes out when the World Cup is on.
Brexit casts a pall over everything these days. When HSBC brought out an advert about Brits being outward-looking people said it was too Remain-y. So too a vomit-inducing spot for British Airways that seems to think there are actually people out there who like Paloma Faith.
Meanwhile, this Carling advert has drawn accusations that it's a tad... Brexity. It's not really, but I can see how people of either political inclination can see patterns here. That's what the EU referendum has done - everything's binary now: Good or bad; black or white; leave or remain.
Either way my country seems to have gone completely bonkers in the last ten years - so for me this Carling advert - and all the rest of the 'brilliant Britain' ads - ring a little hollow.
It's enough to make one turn to drink. As long as it's not Carling.
What would you do for a bag of Tu-dah? As those of us old to remember these Tudor Crisps adverts from the 70s and 80s know only too well - they are worth climbing a mountain for.
Tudor Crisps were, of course, a north-east brand - if you hadn't guessed from these extremely canny ads featuring crisp-obsessed likely lad Terry - that featured unlikely flavours such as Spring Onion, Pickled Onion and Tomato Sauce.
AdTurds - who still savours flavour - still has fond memories of the Spring Onion Tudors. They were later joined by 'something a bit special' in the shape of the ridged Tudor specials, featuring even less likely combos such as Roast Beef & Pickle, Gammon & Pineapple and Sour Cream & Chives.
I'm not sure whether to believe the Wikipedia entry on Tudor Crisps, but other flavours apparently included some foul offerings as Fried Onion, Fried Tomato & Bacon, Hot Dog & Mustard and even Kipper. Kipper-flavoured crisps. Fucking hell.
All the ads feature Terry, first as a wily paperboy conning a younger mate to deliver his papers to the Dunston Rocket, an incredible 29-storey brutalist tower block, now sadly demolished, in Newcastle. In exchange of a "bag 'o Tu-dah" of course.
Next Terry returns as a fully-grown, though still snack-crazed, man to see his old boss and learn about the new flavours offered by Tudor Crisps. Having scoffed his way through a bag of the specials, Terry reveals he's not exactly making his way in the world - instead he's a chauffeur. There's more than a whiff of Clement & Le Fenais to these ads - and that impression is confirmed when we hear who's doing the voiceovers at the end.
Next up on Terry's crisp-orientated rampage around his old haunts is a young floppy-haired student, who gets exactly what he deserves for not displaying the local lingo by having Terry scoff all his crisps and leave him high and dry on the A1 hard shoulder. What a bastard.
Still, it's hard to stay angry at Terry and soon he has a hot date. It seems some pyar canny Geordie rumpy-pumpy is likely to take place in the back of Terry's Rolls. And what could be better than a shag in a limo with the Tyne bridge lit up in the background?
I'll tell you what could be better - a bag of Tudor Crisps Tomato Sauce flavour. Sharon is, understandably, disappointed at first, probably expecting something involving sausage at least. But she soon relents - and her moans of passion soon give way to the unmistakeable sound of Terry's salty morsels being enthusiastically masticated.
The message? Well, clearly the love of Tudor Crisps can lead to sociopathic behaviour - and even to passing up clear offers of penetrative sex. To be fair, they must be some bloody good snacks.
The Geordie references? Count 'em. First there's the all-toon cast, including Allen Mechen (spotted in such Tyneside classics as Spender and later as a Geordie baddie in Brookside) as Adult Terry. Then the homely voiceover of James Bolam, aka Terry Collier of The Likely Lads (and sequel Whatever Happened To...). The numerous shots of Newcastle landmarks of course. And finally the soundtrack to these Tudor Crisps adverts - The Blaydon Races, a song probably incomprehensible to anyone born outside a 50-mile radius of Gateshead.
Sadly Tudor went the way of all things in the early 90s, lost in the product mix of Walkers. In a final indignity the Tudors blue Salt & Vinegar and green Cheese & Onion bags were made to bow down to the Walkers cognitively-dissonant reverse branding. A bit like Henry VIII making Catholic bishops recant their religion, only with crisp packets.
Anyway, here's the full gamut of Tudor Crisps adverts. Watch them - and I challenge you not to feel like it's nearing teatime on a Friday afternoon in between Batfink and Rainbow.
This Samsung Galaxy Advert for the new S10 phone might not be quite so hideous, were it not for the robotic rendition of Que Sera Sera - Doris Day's reminder from the past that you life may be shit but there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
We also see a lot of grown-up kids in the future, doing all manner of wonderful things relating to technology - with barely any screaming, cannibalism or mindless violence due to the existential terror of man-made climate change that will surely kill us all.
Perhaps that's why nothing in the Samsung Galaxy Advert looks remotely like Britain, in fact nothing like Europe for that matter. Perhaps some of the more upscale bits of America's west coast, maybe south-east Asia. But certainly nothing as hideous as Stockon, Poole or Peterborough. Probably because the country will have been utterly destroyed by Brexit in the future we're looking at. Or, more prosaically, because those town I mentioned are shit.
And what's with the little kid on a tricycle roaming around the house? Is this advert doing its best to evoke the mind-bending horrors of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining? She's looking at a window that lights u with a cartoon character when he rides past - which is good, because the chances are all she'll see are dead trees and more concrete in the near-future that Samsung is so keen to show us.
What else? A man using haptics to design clothes; another man using a stylus to create a tattoo. That's it? That's the bright new future? Same work, different tablet?
But wait, there's a robot, drawing a tattoo on a woman's shoulder. And as anyone who's learned anything from horror films knows only too well, it's probably seconds away from lasering a hole through the back of her head. Thanks, Samsung.
Next up - a same-sex couple snuggling up with an ultrasound attachment on their smartphone and admiring a scan of a baby that will surely be doomed to a short, brutish life due to the sea levels that will have covered most of mainland Britain in 50 years' time.
And we end with a bunch of children gleefully killing something, in a reference to massively multiplayer online gaming. If you've ever seen the Black Mirror episode Men Against Fire you might recognise what a frightening vision of the future this amounts to. If you haven't, well, still.
Augmented reality multiplied by stealth military training is a terrifying, hands-reach vision of a dystopian future. Yet here it's a Samsung Galaxy Advert where technology = good. And that's it.
There's enough material for Charlie Brooker here to create a whole new season of Black Mirror. We should be terrified by the real and varied threats to our existence this advert cheerfully highlights. Que sera, sera; whatever will be, will be - it's not worth worrying about it.
Instead we're glumly staring at our phone while the world burns. And that's the future we're creating.
Needless to say, this rumination on the context to a new Tom Hiddleston Centrum Advert is pure fiction. Or is it?
"Ah, another day begins! Looks nice out. Hope Tom Hiddleston isn't downstairs making us breakfast again!
"Just patter down these tasteful stairs and... oh God. How did he get in again this time? The locks changed, the bars on the windows...
"Is it too late to run upstairs and grab the Mace - or even jump from a first-floor window? Probably break our ankles but... shit! Tom Hiddleston's seen us. Better play along or Tom Hiddleston'll get angry. And cry. And start wanking too probably - like last time.
"Fuck! Tom Hiddleston's got a fucking knife. OK. Stay calm...
"'Heyyyyyyy!' to you too, you fucking sicko. Jesus, will Tom Hiddleston ever leave us alone?
"'Pop back and make you breakfast...?' Christ, Tom Hiddleston really is nuts. Wonder how he escaped from prison this time. And how did he find us?
"What's that Tom Hiddleston's got on that plate? A fried egg on top of vegetables and fruit? Pretty fucking weird - but at least it's not Tom Hiddleston's own severed toes with a sprinkling of Tom Hiddleston's pubes like last time.
"Pepper on top? Whatever you say. Best to not upset Tom Hiddleston. Wait - there's probably crushed-up sleeping pills or Rohypnol in this stuff. Better pretend to eat while secretly feeding it to the dog.
"The dog... where is the dog? Wait, the knife. The knife in Tom Hiddleston's hand. Oh God...
"Maybe that's why Tom Hiddleston's looking so regretful - almost like he's trying to apologise for something...
"Shit, listen to what Tom Hiddleston is saying - he gets upset when we don't play along. Just pretend to be Tom Hiddleston's wife and listen very carefully to what Tom Hiddleston is-.
"What the fuck? Is Tom Hiddleston speaking Chinese? Shit - this is new. Do we have to pretend to be Chinese now?
"Centrum, what's that? Probably best not swallow whatever that is or we'll be waking up in a cellar dressed in leather chaps and chained to a wall again.
"Jesus, the way Tom Hiddleston keeps rubbing his hands like he's Lady Macbeth - and that furrowed brow. And those eyes - eyes that have seen too much. Those hands that have closed around so many elegant young necks...
"'A bit busy for the next few weeks'. Oh God, what's Tom Hiddleston got planned? Something involving saws and scalpels probably. For weeks. Where's Tom Hiddleston going to take us?"
"Wait, is Tom Hiddleston going? OK this is our one chance to get Tom Hiddleston out of here. Just play along with Tom Hiddleston's twisted domestic bliss fantasy and we might just get out of this alive.
"Mess about with Tom Hiddleston's collar a bit - it will soothe his murderous sexual desires. Could we gouge Tom Hiddleston's eyes out while his defences are down? Maybe crush Tom Hiddleston's windpipe?
No, no - his bloody, eyeless face twisted in a mask of hatred as he rages, sightless, around the kitchen swiping with that carving knife is too horrible to contemplate. He looks calm. We just have to get Tom Hiddleston outside the door and we're safe...
"Tom Hiddleston's... Tom Hiddleston's actually going. Argh, he's reaching back to drag us out of the house, into the back of his blood-soaked pick-up, away from the lovely house and safety!
"What the fuck? Tom Hiddleston's actually gone?!
"We're safe! Safe from the sex dungeon, safe from the needy passive aggression of his twisted psyche! Safe from the endless degrading acts Tom Hiddleston makes us carry out to satisfy his perverted desires!
This is a search phrase that repeatedly led readers to this blog, back in the day when it was possible to measure such things. And perhaps it is; Jacamo has never shied away from deviating from the norm when it comes to body shapes - and I’ve no truck with that.
But whether that was ever true or not, that was certainly the perception. And that’s not all. Jacamo has been a byword for cheap, mainly bad clothes made for gangs of deeply unfashionable men who skipped straight from their Mums buying their clothes to “that looks OK” online clothes shopping. In this way I guess it performs a vital public service for men theoretically old enough to live independently but not sufficiently decrepit to be on the radars of any age-related charities.
The recruitment of Andrew Flintoff - a good cricketer who has enjoyed a bafflingly successful television career, mainly by virtue of apparently being a cheaper Paddy McGuinness - or being a noted purveyor of dressing-room banter, evinced by his pained friendship with Robbie “Sav” Savage - did little to convince that Jacamo customers were not the sort of people sustained by a diet of chicken takeaways, whey protein and Jeremy Clarkson books.
And now this. Men doing men things. Count ‘em: playing the guitar; having tattoos and facial hair; going to the football... my guess would be that you’ve hit about 90% of Jacamo’s audience with that particular hit-list of homogenous demographic traits. Factor in a Ladbrokes app on their phones and you’d expect smashed the jackpot to laddish smithereens.
And buying your wedding clobber from Jacamo? The pathos is almost unbearable - like buying a Festive Bake for your Christmas dinner or sending a Page 3 girl a Valentine’s card.
As it is we get to see these absolute chiefs walking into a church wearing various shades of washed-out colours like a packet of Refreshers, having psyched themselves up appropriately to “own their moments”.
I tire of this apparently inexhaustible drive to make us imbue every second of our lives with almost unbearable importance. In an age where we are literally driving ourselves to mental ill health because of our fear of missing out, sentiments like this are like pouring petrol on a particularly dumb bonfire made of fast fashion, grilled sauce-smothered chicken and Instagram filters.
I urge you to reject this concept of owning the moment - or even a shitty, lavender-coloured v-neck vest. Enjoy the moment instead. It’s perfectly possible to do so without getting into the zone before a fictional gig, like you never do anyway; cheer on the terraces of a sparsely-populated and mysteriously cosmopolitan football match, like no one ever does; or head into a waiting church full of people for an imaginary wedding looking like a packet of Refreshers - as if you’re a bunch of extras from Hollyoaks.
I’d like to lay ‘Jacamo is for fat bastards’ to rest once and for all - because there’s nothing wrong with being fat, after all. And being a bastard these days is pretty much par for the course.
But judging by the desperate need for approval, instant gratification - not to mention acting and dressing like everyone else - Jacamo is certainly for sad bastards.
Buy an old pair of cords from a charity shop. Go for a walk. Head to the pub with a friend you haven’t seen for a while. Eat a cream horn. Deactivate your account. Have a really big, guilt-free wank.
There’s a healthier prescription for life in the 21st Century - and you can’t buy it online.
“I’d like to thank you all for joining us this morning. As you all know, the situation is grave. First we’ll have the minutes from last month and then we’ll move on to this month’s agenda. Oh, hello John, we heard the traffic was bad. Grab a seat. Nice tie… Oh, what’s…?”
“Oh, this? Just my tiny tube of Pringles for lunch. It fits snugly in my breast pocket so I can access it whenever I want.”
“I see. Well I hope you won’t be eating your reconstituted potato snacks while we discuss how a no-deal Brexit will severely impact on our…”
*CRUNCH*
“John, I really don’t think this is the time or place to be…”
*CRUNCH*
“John, seriously, we’re going to have to lay people off. The business will be decimated. 99 years in the industry and we’re facing an existential threat. It’s highly inappropriate to…”
*CRUNCH*
“Put it away at once.”
“I’m sorry it’s just like the advert says once you pop you can’t stop . There, I’ve popped it back in my breast pocket where it belongs now.”
“John I can’t concentrate with the moustachioed face of Julius Pringles peering over the seam of your breast pocket. I really don’t think it’s a good idea…”
*CRUNCH*
“… to put a tiny tube of any potato snacks in the breast pocket of a suit when you’re going to work – in fact I can’t conceive of any situation whatsoever when it might be wise to match a suit jacket with a novelty starch-based snack – whether you intend to eat them for lunch or not!”
“Sorry Anthony. I’ll turn the tube around so Julius isn’t looking at you.”
“Thank you. So the first item on the agenda is the compulsory redundancy of 50% of our workforce…”
Well, did anyone think we’d make it this far? By which I mean 2019 full stop, never mind the annual rundown of the Worst Adverts Of 2019.
In 2016 I went a bit mad. Well, more so. Brexit, Trump and the Tories had done my nut in – and advertising seemed to small-fry in comparison. If only I knew what fresh horrors 2019 would bring. Not just climate change, cunts still running the world and the quite hideous face of Michael Gove, but the Peloton advert.
Adverts can be bad in a variety of ways. They can be naff, smug, simply annoying. They can desecrate your favourite thing, they can stick in your lugholes like a particularly annoying bit of earwax, they might make your bite the inside of your cheek in some reflexive, masochistic instinct.
I’ve never quite got there but I can totally believe that advertising has drawn people to physical violence, meted out on their hapless television like a punchbag made of plastic and whatever that gooey stuff they put in modern TV screens is.
But advertising is more than that – not simply annoying, stupid and intrusive. It’s an engine for acquisition, consumption, fear and anxiety. It sets unrealistic standards, unattainable lifestyles and promises you that if only you buy that Renault Kadjar you can be free of that gnawing sense of existential futility. We buy, so we are.
When we know that our world is on its last legs – thanks to all the things we buy, eat, throw away and burn – the role of advertising doesn’t seem like a vague irritant, it’s appears more sinister than that throbbing vein on Dominic Raab’s temple.
In that spirit I have collected what you told me were your most hated adverts of the year. Some housekeeping first: the Meerkats have been elevated to a grand hall of fame and many suggestions actually originated in previous years.
Needless to say everyone has their own personal gallery of Hell when it comes to the ad break: the Nationwide ads, Marks & Spencer Christmas jumper advert, Lorraine Kelly, Jet2, Chanel No. 5, Deliveroo were all in the mix too. Let’s just consider them consigned to a particularly obnoxious Pandora’s Box. And while Blue’s boiler cover advert is truly appalling, the primary emotion it evokes is pity.
So somewhere between you and me, we collected what I consider to be some of the worst adverts of the year. As ever the final decision is not mine, but yours. I have set out my arguments below – and in doing so probably saved myself thousands in therapy.
Now choose from the worst adverts of 2019 – in this batshit year it’s probably the only meaningful way to strike a tiny blow against the forces of despair.
Worst Adverts Of 2019
Muppets Portal advert
Portal is like something out of Black Mirror, so the fact it’s advertised by The Muppets just serves to make it more sinister – and even more like an episode of Black Mirror. We all know that Facebook wants to monetise and weaponise our own personal data against us and it’s bad enough when they know where you shop, your favourite films and most frequently-browsed categories on Pornhub.
But just imagine what Facebook will be up to with the videos it will deny Portal records, saves and mines for information, before admitting that it does, promising to do better and then keeps recording, saving and mining that shit anyway.
Setting up a Facebook-connected webcam above your TV set is basically the technical equivalent of inviting a Bluetooth-enabled Julian Assange into your living room to record everything you say and do, while paying for the privilege. .
So bringing the Muppets into this just seems like a deliberate act of pure malice, like Donald Trump co-opting children’s fiction’s most famous asylum-seeker, Paddington Bear, to be the brand ambassador of his plan to build a huge wall to keep all the brown people out.
Fozzy Bear is a tech bro who is selling your browsing data; Bunsen and Beaker work in a Russian troll farm. And you thought the Cookie Monster was only interested in biscuits…
Muppets creator Jim Henson, of course, departed this mortal coil some decades ago, meaning his most famous and lovable creations have been whored out to anyone willing to throw enough money at the entertainment Borg Cube that is Disney – including dismal brandfucks such as Barclays, Three and Fucking Warburtons. The Muppets, by the handy virtue of not being real, have no say in the matter of course.
Annoying, a bit depressing? Sure. But matching kids’ TV things to tech-brands that increasingly control our lives and know more about us than we do, is tinged with dystopia.
Peloton advert
When the apocalypse comes the Peloton Gang will be ready: poised on their stupidly expensive bikes, awaiting their instructions. These delusional sweat chiefs are clearly in training for such an event and will surely take to their bikes and rule the post-apocalyptic landscape, calves bulging and heads swelling.
“All hail the Two-Wheels!” will be the cry of the masses too stupid or unfit to be able to cycle for 60 seconds on full intensity. And from the Peloton Studio our new ruler will dispense inspirational soundbites, lycra sleeping bags and hot laser death.
Finally the true purpose of Peloton will be revealed and it will be like Day Of The Triffids or 28 Days Later, only with exercise bikes. We don’t know what it will be but probably something to do with anal probing seems likely.
In the meantime these people continue their journey to nowhere, knowing they are indeed righteous – and with a BMI significantly less than it was 18 months ago.
Aaron500, your life is a cruel veneer of success masking an empty abyss of a human being.
Just Eat advert
The Just Eat advert – indeed Just Eat’s entire business – is less of an advert and more of an imperative. Just eat. Now and always. Until your legs are so swollen with gout you won’t be able to escape the rising tides lapping at your door as you listlessly watch another rerun of Family Guy and masticate on another cold Domino’s.
Eating out used to be a rare treat, now it seems to be almost the default position for young people, many of whom seem to barely comprehend the concept of a gas stove, tin opener or cabbage.
We all claim to despise single-use materials but the growth in takeaway-to-your-door seems to be the ultimate expression of single-use living: use, discard, repeat – whether it’s Tindr or Just Eat. Somehow food has infected our brains, become an addiction – like the grubs that want to be eaten by birds so they can reproduce. It’s mind-control through our stomachs.
The fact all of these takeaway services – thriving on zero-hours contracts and the modern-day slavery plantations that many British takeaways consist of – take care to align the idea of takeaways with watching television is, of course, not a coincidence. When the invasion finally comes we’ll all be so bloated and unfit the only resistance we’ll be able to threaten is a zero-star review on Tripadvisor. Just after we’ve ordered our latest KFC anyway.
Tom Hiddleston Centrum advert
Tom Hiddlestone is, of course, a sexual deviant who breaks into your house and gaslights you into thinking he’s your partner – and brambles with fried eggs is a perfectly normal meal. Don’t believe me? Simply watch this video, masquerading as an advert for multivitamin nonces Centrum but secretly a cry-for-help from the deeply disturbed actor.
Not really of course (although I am leaving the door open to this interpretation) – this is Hiddleston’s Japandering nightmare made real – an advert so ludicrous it’s designed only to be seen by foreign audiences who don’t give a crap if you delivered a landmark Hamlet at the Old Vic.
The Hidd, as he is not known, is of course one of those unthreatening actor types that make women go all fizzy in the knickers, so it’s a mark of this advert’s true awfulness that it manages to make him look less like the new James Bond and and more like a deeply awkward, creepy, shaggy-haired estate agent with a raging coke habit and erectile dysfunction.
“Get ready for death” struck me as about as useful, welcome and cost-effective as these ridiculous slogans, appearing in your eyeline more often than Claudia Winkelman for much of the Autumn. But get ready how? Do what, exactly? Start praying? Built a new ten-lane motorway through Folkestone at the weekends? Detonate your relatives?
Since we all knew Brexit wasn’t going to happen in 2019 they struck me – at a cost of one hundred million pounds – as rather wasteful, amounting to an already-debunked bluff: a man trying to play poker with a privet hedge using Whot cards.
Whatever you think of the politics of the matter, a campaign urging everyone in the country to prepare for things completely unpredictable, fundamentally unknowable and ultimately impossible was rather like expecting the British people to have a contingency plan for a gas giant hitting Wrexham.
Mariah Carey Walkers crisps advert
Think Walkers Crisps; think Mariah Carey. That’s at least how I imagine some addled exec pitching this ‘which American celebrity is available to advertise something about which they truly give zero fucks?’ televisual infected gland.
It’s now illegal to not like All I Want For Christmas Is You, a song by Mariah that represents the quintessence of her soulless brand of R’n’B and has now found its way into Carols From Kings.
So naturally she’s wheeled out to pretend she’s actually a nice person and would actually deign to dirty her fingers with something as vile as a Pigs-In-Blankets flavoured Walkers crisps. To watch her fingering one of the snacks is like watching a man trying to defuse a nuclear bomb.
At least you can imagine Gary Lineker actually eating crisps or Nigel Farage hating foreigners, but the notion of Carey eating mass-market British crisps is so fundamentally dishonest it’s like Greta Thunberg advertising Rustlers Double Decker Cheese Burgers.
Oral B advert
Is there a more gratuitous use of a jiggling lady arse and crotch than this advert for… toothpaste? Following painstaking study of this actress’ backside over multiple freeze-frames, it even appears her leggings are translucent – revealing a pretty skimpy thong.
It’s only a surprise we don’t get a gasped “Tits!” as she works her breasts in some wholly dentally-relevant exercise that involves a close-up of her bristols wobbling up and down. Stick some of these shots into a 70s sitcom and it would appear on one of those You Won’t Believe This Cleavage And Racism! programmes that litter the festive airwaves on the less-visited Freeview channels.
I think what annoys people most in this Oral B advert is the baffling claim that the lady in question “didn’t even know Oral B made a toothpaste”. Toothpaste being pretty much their entire raison d’etre, this seems akin to claiming you didn’t know the Nazis did fascism, The Daily Mail peddles hatred or Channel 5’s primary product is shit.
Over ten years of writing this blog I’ve come to realise that some of the things that annoy people most of all are dishonesty, treating the audience as if they’re idiots or what amounts to a kind of trolling via absurd claims. The Oral B advert ticks all three boxes: a dismal trifecta of advertising detritus more irritating than a lump of gristle between your teeth.
Lavazza Real Italian Coffee Advert
Sometimes an advert isn’t hideous, genuinely angering or deliberately irritating – it’s simply inept, poor, crap. In trying to stake some sort of claim to being the only coffee of note, Lavazza has thrown the kitchen sink at this messy advert that tries to make us believe that Premiership footballers care – or even know – what coffee is.
The very idea of ‘real Italian coffee’ is, of course, about as genuine as ‘proper English tea’ and it taps into a kind of tiresome snobbery that circulates around coffee, wine and whiskey. And we’ve gone properly bonkers over coffee. Buy some from any outlet these days and you’re basically paying more by weight that you might for gold, caviar or enriched uranium.
Quite what the sort of people who might spend €200 drinking 17 espressos in an Italian ccafe – the equivalent of drinking a tasty eggcup of coffee grounds the consistency of tar, more potent that injecting ketamine into your eyeballs – might make of instant coffee is anyone’s guess, but I have a feeling they might repeat the words ‘real Italian coffee’ with rather more puzzlement or contempt.
One reason I do like this Lavazza advert is it that its unintentional hilariousness reminded me of an intentionally hilarious compilation along very similar lines from the excellent Harry Hill. Picture them mouthing an incredulous ‘ear cataracts?’ and you’ll probably be a lot happier.
Amazon advert
An advert attempting to reposition one of the most famous hideous employers since the Roman army into a place of rainbow dust, pixie farts and beatific joy is one of the most sinister rebrandings since Instagram users turned Auschwitz into the backdrops of their latest #livingmybestlife Instagram posts.
The sheer brass neck – not to mention brass balls, brass spleen and brass nipples of this – bears some consideration: Amazon is under fire for multiple deaths of its contract workers, not to mention repeated suicidal crises and numerous workplace injuries at its sweatshopspiss-strewn “fulfilment centres”, described by one former worker as “isolating colon[ies] of hell where people having breakdowns is a regular occurrence”.
Amazon, as we all know, contributed £87.50, some cardboard boxes and a DVD boxset of Young Sheldon in UK taxes during 2019, despite earning over twelvety trillion dollarpounds per second. So its reimagining as a purveyor of festive delights by a workforce who would only be too happy to work for free, such is their devotion to transporting GHD hair-straighteners to your door, is a work of such obscene propaganda that George Orwell momentarily came back to life, gave a Christmas lecture on the redundancy of his entire body of work and threw himself into an Amazon carboard-shredder in protest.
It’s not simply a bad advert, nor a mere body blow against human decency, it’s a kind of evil so pure it should be confined to a jar and guarded by a gang of priests in a church cellar. And that’s before I get to that fucking singing kid.
OK, you’ve heard my thoughts. It’s over to you. Choose from the worst adverts of 2019 below – and may God have mercy on all of us.
