Advertising as we never wanted it

It's my most hated TV advertising campaign ever.

This coming from a child of the advertising age - someone who would flee waving jazz hands to Boots whenever I saw a girl on tv advertising a product making her hair looked slightly thicker or more enriched than my own.

It's BTs 'trapped in their own lives' celebrity couple. You know. The will-they-won't they couple who have none of the sex appeal of Milk Tray yet none of the charm of the Bisto family.

They nearly broke up once. But damn the British public - we actually COMPLAINED to BT until the couple, despite his moving to Cornwall (happens to the best of us), announced their engagement. Today, dear reader, they announce they are pregnant after we voted in our millions *faint* to make it such. Strike us down, for we have sinned.

The options on the BT.com vote were only a) pregnant or b) not pregnant - a girlfriend of mine lamented at tea break that there wasn't an option c) stomach-popping alien.


Doesn't the fact she needs more than he can provide worry anyone? Doesn't the fact her maturity and responsibilities far outweighed his once happy-go-lucky lifestyle? Or are BT doing something far more worrying - telling us that this is what life is like?

Expect the minimal and you'll never be disappointed. The Katie Price 'kids from divorced parents get more presents and holidays so it must be better' (and a cool step-Dad like Kris Marhsall) mentality. I can tell you - this isn't what second families of Britain look like - I can vouch for that.

In an 'I wish I was them' ad campaign these people would be more beautiful (Sorry Esther), less complicated, more likeable. In a reality ad-campaign there would be screaming 'you're not my father' fits from the step-children, complicated cross-over family events with the children’s Dad, money and housing troubles born from the legalities of the previous separation and a few more anxiety fights between the couple.

So there you have it, BT. Please make them either miserable or beautiful. Not grey.

Always a woman to me

You know when you see an advert on telly and it gets you sobbing? No? Well it happened to me. Fresh from the success of their wonderfully uplifting Christmas advert , John Lewis did it again.

This went straight over the head of my other half who pointed and laughed at my hormonal blubings, but apparently in the world of the female, it wasn’t just me.



And for perhaps the first time in my life I’m going to link to the Mail, who wrote an article on the uplifting and moving advert which has had Britain ‘sobbing into their breakfast bowls’.

As the ad follows a girl in a red dress as she grows older through the years (yes, I know – absolute cliché rolled in cliché) but in typical John Lewis understated style. Modern yet traditional, independent yet family orientated.

She’s Always a Woman To Me by Fyfe Dangerfield lulls you through each developing moment in this woman’s life and, bravo, Mr Lewis, it got me right in the goolies.