WE all know the Shake n’Vac advert was designed to be so dreadful you’d never forget it. But there are plenty more you’d happily have your memory erased to get rid of:
Midland Bank
‘Come and talk, talk to the Midland. Come and talk… to the listening bank’. Unfortunately this annoyingly cheerful jingle will suddenly start playing on repeat in your brain decades after the 80s ended. The Midland doesn’t even exist anymore, for f**k’s sake.
Chatback
‘If you’re sat around at home, make new friends on the telephone’. This late-night phone chat horror is more firmly embedded in your head than an alien parasite. And helpfully reminds you that you were indeed sat around at 2am being targeted by a phone service for society’s biggest losers.
For mash get Smash
The robots were amusing enough but there was a problem: Smash is absolutely disgusting. The short yet strangely memorable jingle should have gone: ‘For mash, boil a potato you lazy f**k.’
Cornetto gondola ad
‘Just one Cornetto, give it to me…’ etc. The numerous problems of this earworm are: (1) It may be a pastiche, but if you hate opera, it’s still opera. (2) This advert is still the full extent of most Britons’ knowledge of Italian culture. (3) He nicks a lady’s Cornetto, ruling out sex with a beautiful woman for the sake of a cheap ice cream you could buy in any tatty newsagent’s in Crewe.
TSB, the bank that likes to say ‘yes’
We’d all like to say ‘yes’. ‘Yes, you can have a real dinosaur as a pet.’ ‘Yes, you could easily be mistaken for a supermodel.’ But when push came to shove, TSB was a hard-nosed retail bank that would have said ‘no’ without a moment’s hesitation, eg. ‘No, we are not going to call off the bailiffs.’ (Although in fairness they did earlier say ‘yes’ to a credit card.)
Kellogg’s Bran Flakes
‘They’re tasty, tasty, very very tasty. They’re very tasty. (Beat) They’re very tasty.’ Surely worthy of an Ivor Novello award. The only issue is that Bran Flakes are not ‘very tasty’, more ‘very cardboardy’. And always remind you of your gran discussing keeping her bowel movements ‘regular’. Yum.
