We’d never ad it so good

ONE of my wife’s favourite expressions, frequently uttered as we’re watching TV, is: “I love it when we don’t have to watch the adverts.” It’s almost become her catchphrase.

It refers to when we’ve recorded a commercial channel’s show on our Sky Q box and can therefore fastforward through the corporate virtue-signalling which interrupts it every 15 minutes.

But there’s a series currently on Channel 5 where the adverts are arguably the best bit, if only for their amusement value. Not the modern-day ads we have to suffer during its commercial breaks but the ones dug out from the archives as part of the programme itself.Ads, that is, which date back four decades.

The show I’m talking about is

THE 1980s SUPERMARKET (C5, 9pm).Yes, that one again. I’m sorry to mention it two weeks running. But not very. Tonight it looks at Eighties fitness fads, recalling how the big stores and food firms cashed in.

There’s a reminder, for instance, of a fine old ad for Findus Lean Cuisine, where a young man is excitedly anticipating the arrival of his date, for whom he’s preparing what looks sure to be a memorable meal. Memorable, that is, as in “I remember when, in 1983, I served my date a Findus frozen lasagne and she broke my nose”.

There’s also an old ad for Milky Way, whose makers wanted us to know it was healthier than the average chocolate bar. (“The sweet you CAN eat between meals, WITHOUT ruining your appetite,” its slogan used to boast. “Unless you’re a greedy pig like me, and eat 10 of them,” I used to shout back from my parents’ sofa.)

Its Eighties ad, shown tonight, is actually a cartoon, featuring a red car and a blue car having a race. The blue car “takes the Milky Way”.The greedy red car takes a different route, eating everything in its path. Remember it? The blue car wins.The red car, erm, doesn’t. Need I say more? Probably.

The only real downside to this series is that people talk a fair bit of twaddle.

“I don’t think, up until the mid-Eighties, I’d really heard of anybody being on a diet,” says Anthea Turner, one of its contributors.

Elsewhere, we’re told that the infamous cabbage soup diet soared in popularity “mainly due to the Eighties version of social media”.

And before we ask the obvious question, it goes on to inform us that the “Eighties version of social media” was… the fax machine.

“That was your text, that was your email, that was your WhatsApp, all rolled into one,” we’re assured.

“Was it heck!” I shout, this time from a sofa that’s my own, burning off a handy 50 calories in the process.