BACK in the 1980s, there was no choice but to sit through an ad break waiting for the show to resume. Here’s how we coped:
Fight with a sibling
Five minutes of advertising for Dream Topping was a perfect opportunity to sort your bitch sister the f**k out back then and still is today. Try instigating arguments over plotlines, which other show you’ve seen that actor in, or who’s in command of the remote control.
Claim the adverts are better than the show
A reliable witticism of parents back in the day, anyone familiar with 80s adverts might assume this to be homespun irony. Anyone familiar with the shite that was dished up to captive audiences will know it was frequently true.
Play drinking games
Every time an ad features a smug man in a big car, a woman with perfect skin smiling at yoghurt, or an unlikely fat person dancing, take a hefty slug of whatever beverage you have to hand. Alcohol preferable so you’ll soon be too pissed to distinguish the adverts from the show.
Pit stop
After the drinking game you’ll need the loo during the subsequent ad break. If not, this is your chance to get in another round. Either way when you return someone will have stolen your good chair with the best view of the telly so you can enjoy a brief fight, as above.
Shout at them
Once you’re nice and hammered you’ll become incredibly witty and ready to offer hilarious retorts to whichever adverts you’re treated to. Back in the 80s that could be suggesting the Gold Blend couple should drop the coffee and shag, or that the Shake ’N’ Vac lady could do her dance on your dick. It really was a golden age of comedy.
Change the channel
Depending on whether you were advanced enough to have a remote, this could mean lumbering up the telly yourself or ordering a kid to do it. Whereupon you’d find an interminable period drama on BBC1, the Open University on BBC2, and Teletext on Channel Four. Get Play Your Cards Right back on and dream of the future.
