h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It used to be called FibreGel until taken over by SennaCot. We used to carry it around as a good anti-diarrhoea potion, a get you back to civilisation aid.

No wonder the Who sang "hope I die before I get old"

Loads of good hateful adverts in this thread, very entertaining. (I'd know, this is what I've been reading at work for the past few days).

I too dislike the Cillit Bang shouty man who isn't really called Barry Scott. The first CB advert I was somewhat taken in, it looked like it could work, but the newer ones (join me next time when I'll be talking EVEN LOUDER!!) look like they're being faked and make me angry. Plus the humour/novelty/whatever the attraction was to the shouting in the first instance has well and truely worn off now.

The same about the novelty wearing off can be said about the frosties advert, about 3 seconds after you start watching it. At my school there were rumours going around that the kid off the frosties advert a) got knifed and died, b) got knifed and didn't die and c) left the country for fear of being knifed and is now living in Australia. Either way at least that advert's not being shown now.

My pet hate with adverts is (excuse the man-ness) anything to do with periods and the like. It is my personal opinion that there should be a separate channel for those adverts (that or ONLY in soap opera advert breaks) where these adverts can be shown so that women who are needful of such products can flick over and choose one at their leisure, because frankly now that there's so many of these adverts talking about this I just don't want to know anymore. Whenever I mention this all the women go 'oh but you have to know about this in case you get married' etc. Well thanks but I'm not stupid, I DID do sex education classes at school so I do know about them through, and the normal etiquette when one strikes (run for the hills seems to work), but I don't want my advert breaks filled with products that are a) aimed at probably far less than half of the people who can be watching the ads anyway (half are male, others don't have them yet/anymore) b) are becoming increasingly more graphic and c) are just really rubbishy and unfunny adverts, often with crappy voiceovers which always annoy me anyway.

Ooo, speaking of crappy voice overs, the clearasil spot stuff adverts. Who decided to have people looking as if they're speaking to a backing track that's about 3 minutes out of time with them, AND when they're blatantly not using the same words!? A simple way to avoid this is just not to have them moving their mouths, yes the voices are disembodied but in advertland that works a lot better (and is a lot less agravating) than watching some increasingly stupid looking teenagers with stick-on spots mouth along gormlessly to some voiceover in what appears to be a foreign language to them.

Oh, and another one, that toothpaste advert (sensodyne I think) where the woman going on about the 'discovery that acid erosion is caused by acid in our modern diets'. Well it's not going to be caused by skydiving now is it. A little rephrasing would help this woman sound a lot less silly.

I think that's it for now. Keep up the good ranting everyone.

I find 'feminine product' ads amusing. To be honest, if they took off all the ads that didnt apply to a number of the potential audience, we'd not have adverts. I dont use aftershave, room fresheners, loan sharks or mobility aids for instance. and if I wanted to get cheaper X insurance, I'd make some phone calls! Reckon you're just going to have to live with em me dear...

Cheaply made voiced-over-in-appropriate-language ads do irritate me.

ANY of the ads that give you someone you're supposed to respect as a professional who then feeds you a load of completely/mostly fabricated, irrelevant, misleading cow poo... Well, I hope they are proud of themselves frankly.... Cos even their mothers must be slightly embarrassed.

Yes remember that horrid advert a few years ago when the trump line was...

"That's scientific fact!"

Which they were forced to change to

"That's a scientists verdict..."

Upon being done by the advertising standards authority owing to the former being unadulterated bulls**t.

OK, time for a new rant...

This one's one the tell-o-vision (I know, unusual for me! ), for Arm And Hammer toothpaste.

Itt claims to be able to "cure" sensitive teeth. How does it do this? Why, it contains "liquid calcium". Now, calcium is a solid metal at room temperature, it has a melting point of 842°C.

Not a great selling point, if you ask me.

RF

Pouring molten calcium in your mouth will
certainly make you forget about sensitive teeth.

Personally I'd like to challenge Churchill to vanish up
his own.... well I think you know where.

Exhaust?

Yes, the liquid calcium one has had my goat before now

"I don't know how much vegetables cost, but I'm sure you can get more than two weeks worth for £8." If you buy frozen, probably. If you get them fresh, local and organic, no chance.

But what you CAN buy for £8 will get you by plenty fine and probably do you more good than synthesised additive thingies...

If only because we actually digest it all properly and it works quite well thank you!

I am still thoroughly chuffed by the fab meal I cooked for three of us for around a fiver on organic and local famrer's market produce... Beef, mushroom and horseradish sausage toad-in-the-hole with mash and cabbage! Scrummy! Plus loads of veg left over, and sausages!

I see that they haven't wasted any time in advertising
a Pavarotti CD.
And as a bonus to all you ad-watchers out there,
the M&S autumn line ads start this evening so stand by to see
the smirky girls in action.

Oh JOLLY good!

Incidentally, for you youtubers, see if you can find the spam M&S style video... I dont know if it's still up, but if it is it's hilarious!

Anyone else seen the Littlewoods ad with Trinny and Susannah?

We are shown Littlewoods' autumn (or winter) range being loaded into several large cargo planes, all painted in Littlewoods colours.

If this clothing company transports their non-perishable goods by air, often enough to justify their own planes, I for one will not be buying from them ever again.

I heard a rather funny ad on RTE radio last night (yes I went to Dublin for a Chinese, sure it's only 100 miles down the road...)

Soothing voice says

"When you've broken enough hearts for one evening
when you've proved that dancing around like an eejit is the only way to go
(continues with a few other examples I've forgotten)

we'll be there for you.

Abrekebabra"

Basically - come to us for all your pissed out of your head drunken kebab requirements.

Sounds like a brilliant ad!

I love RTE!

The fact you can pick it up loud and clear in Wales and the North of England is one of those little secrets only the expat Irish community knowabout.. I first heard it when I was at my school mate Paul Cregan's, and his mum had it on while she was doing the housework.

So I started listening, and it was full of little delights... an afternoon interview with the Prime Minister, Charles "I have never dipped me sticky fingers into the nation's monies!" Haughey was going with all the gravitas of a BBC interview with the PM, as you might expect, and then the interviewer cut him off in mid-spiel and said "I'm going to have to stop you there, Taioseach, it's time for the old adverts" . And went STRAIGHT to a cheesey commercial radio ad for Kearney's Hardware Shop in Killarney, where County Kerry goes for its urgent nuts, bolts, nails and that sort of thing. The contrast... one minute quizzing the PM on Ireland's foreign policy, the very next, to some little DIY shop in the rural beyond the back of beyond...

It sounded like a cheap local commercial radio station on the national scale, but oddly compulsive listening!

Also the most "accessible" foreign radio station for us, as it broadcast in English - most of the time. It also switched me on to the fact there's more than one possible point of view about Northern Ireland, and how different things look from the other end of the Liverpool ferry.

I do cherish the memory of a friend who was listening to RTE with me just before six. Now if you don't know RTE, six in the evening means the Angelus bell - a sort of Irish Catholic minaret, calling the faithful to prayer. He didn't know this. So when the bell tolled, and rang again, and again, and again, and passed six rings (I forget if a full Angelus is eighteen or twenty-four or one ring for each Station of the Cross, but there are a lot more than six), he said "Bloody hell, has nobody told the Irish the time signal is only six beeps? And why do they do it with a bell?"

And the Lenor ad - apparently, if everyone used the concentrated version of their fabric softener, we could save 14,000 lorryloads per year. Good. So just how many lorryloads would we save if we just didn't buy this entirely unnecessary product?

But that's not going to happen, is it?

One thing I particularly love about 'concentrated' products? People dont really use that much less. Unless things come in small ready to use blocks... If you're pouring for yourself I'd almost guarantee that most people will put in more or less what they are used to using... Which is great for the manufacturers... They sell less for more! And we use just as much... It's win/win for them!

No Mr Wright, you're supporting the 'Kellogs Wake Up To Breakfast Campaign' because they're paying you to. How stupid do you think we are?