Mourning the golden age of TV adverts

Mrs Nurden and I sat open-mouthed watching the TV. Mere mortals like us, who still have programmes peppered with commercials, have been bombarded by adverts more banal, meaningless and annoying than ever.

The golden age of ads which entertained, actually told you what they were selling and often raised a laugh at the same time is now a distant memory.

They used catchy songs we could all remember like The Pointer Sisters’ I’m So Excited selling Crunchie bars, the gorilla drumming to Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate, R Whites’ secret lemonade drinker and the crumbliest Cadbury’s Flake girl.

Food companies knew what their market wanted. Remember what Hovis did with the baker’s boy on a bike? Or the long, smouldering romance of the Nescafe couple played by Anthony

Head and Sharon

Maughan?

Beer companies were best with Chas

‘n’ Dave’s Rabbit and

Gertcha for Courage.

There were the ‘I bet he drinks Carling Black

Label’ adverts. And

Guinness always stole the show. I particularly liked Joe McKinney dancing to Guaglione by Perez Prado while his drink was slowly poured (it knocked

Riverdance off the number one slot).

There were appalling ones, too, like the annoying Shake ‘n’ Vac woman. Damn. That tune will stick in my head for the rest of the day. But at least I still remember the product after all these years.

One of the most stupid now is a squirrel which gives a thumbs-up to some kind of biscuit. Why? Adults must have thought this was a good idea and sent it to a focus group which agreed. I’m guessing it was made up of 12-year-olds.

And don’t get me started on the over-bloated ad campaign for Chanel No 5 set on the Moon. That was supposedly to mark the brand’s 100th anniversary. Who knew?

Adverts that actually told you what they were selling and often raised a laugh at the same time are a distant memory