Just For Men have previous when it comes to making fucking awful tv adverts.

But I’ve always been a fan of bullies who play on the irrational, insecurities of others by pushing a lie in a calous attempt to manipulate them which is why I enjoy this advert so:

Or as Becky, who submitted this bad ad, puts it:

“This is possibly the most awful, irritating, full-of-shit advert I have ever seen. I mean, really!

If you have a nice fake salt-and-pepper ‘do, the birds – who, by the way, are way too young for you – won’t be able to resist your mix of energy and experience.

Yeah right!”

To be fair to Just For Men though, it is a tricky balance – on the one hand you leave your hair grey and it drains all your energy but on the other you dye your hair and you spend all your energy shagging a string of beautiful, younger women. Either way, when you get to 45, the best you can hope for is lying in bed all day with out the strength to get one up.

It’s not easy being a middle-aged, single man, it really isn’t.

Jesus has very kindly taken some time out from being “the son of God” and all that to submit this bad ad:

Obviously, this advert is knowingly and deliberately awful – much like the Pot Noodle itself – but it’s on all the time which, as Jesus puts it, make watching again:

Like being punched in the head by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And then he rapes you in the ear.

With a knife.

And as for the Flight of the Conchords style one, well…

Virgin Trains have always traded on the sniggering schoolboy-ish thought that you’ll be “riding a virgin to Chipping Norton and back” but I’ve just sat open-mouthed watching an edited version of this advert for Virgin Trains – with that Robyn Addison from Survivors in it – in which the 3 scenes of “Becky” ogling the men in the field, the bottled water turning into gushing champagne and the train enters the “tunnel of love” are shown back-to-back that left me… well, speechless.

Is that..?

Did that just…?

Is that a euphemism for…?

Sadly, in the longer version, not only aren’t these scenes played one after the other but we’re also treated to a glimpse of Stoke-on-Trent which really underplays just how much of a sexagasmic experience riding on a Virgin train actually is.

Shame.

Here’s another lovely bad ad submitted by Matthew:

Remember being a teenager… *sigh* those were the days.

Wait, no they weren’t! For the socially inept and unattractive it was bloody awful.

But while I work on my Computer Science degree and plan on how I’ll make all my childhood foes pay with my nerdiness, Oxy are doing what advertisers have always done. Selling things people don’t need by making them feel crap!

Unlike Lynx and Clearasil however, they seem to be desperate to beat their competitors to making an ad that just consists of 20 seconds of a loud man shouting insults at us followed by a 10 second sex scene.

Nearly there guys!

Cheers, Matthew.

There aren’t many things that will get a policeman simulating oral sex in the street these days – except, of course, for the sight of a Tunnocks Caramel Wafer lorry:

Or as Cat, who submitted this bad ad, summarises:

I think this is an accidentally aired GCSE project.

The use of Comic Sans at the end is particularly craptastic.

But even though it does look like someone’s Media Studies course work gone wrong, I think it’s important we’re not too harsh on the makers of this advert – as they’ve clearly had to spend 2, maybe even 3, weeks’ pocket money on it. That’s nearly 10 Tunnocks Caramel Wafers they could have bought instead! Poor loves.

Oh well, 3 weeks miming eating a chocolate coated caramel wafer bar is a price worth paying for this masterpiece.

Nice one, Cat.

I think we can all agree that nothing evokes the spirit of the Swinging 60’s more than the film “The Italian Job” and the preservation of wood.

Which is why whenever I hear Cuprinol’s version of “The Self Preservation Society” song – from that quintessential 1960’s film – with its new, far more apt lyrics about the preservation of wood, I’m instantly transported back to that technicolored Bohemia:

Oh no, hang on, no I’m not…

But what I do particularly love about this advert is the fact there’s only one idea in it – if you change “self preservation” to “wood preservation” it could be about varnish and still fit the tune.

Brilliant.

So from the moment the hapless actors burst out of the garden shed – each one desperately trying to out “Dick Van Dyke” the one in front but only to succeed in becoming inexplicably more twatish – singing those blood curdlingly awful reworked lyrics to the moment of blessed relief and this horror show of an advert finishes, Cuprinol are banking on the fact that changing “self” to “wood” is, in some way, amusing.

Which, in a “Repeatedly being kicked in the genitalia by Jim Davidson whilst watching Schindler’s List on loop for 7 days” kind of way, it is.

Well done, Cuprinol. Well done.

I had a bowl of Oatibix once – but not at a roadside cafe, obviously, because they don’t serve Oatibix.

Although eating it didn’t make me repeatedly sing the chorus to My Sharona with two of my simpering mates, I did below the hits of Marilyn Manson down the toilet bowl latter that day.

I wonder if it’s connected?

Thanks to CovertJellyfish for submitting this bad ad.

Here’s the latest advert from Hovis:

You know what it’s like, you’re under pressure at work, you’ve got a busy social life, your family are driving you mental, so you don’t drink water for a couple of weeks only to bloody well wind up dead!

And let’s be honest, being dead makes you feel pretty bad, doesn’t it?

But thanks to Volvic – and their lovely scientists – all that tiresome “dying of dehydration” can now be avoided. Yes, they must have been working double shifts in the labs to discover that drinking water can – hold on to your underpants – make you *feel* *better*.

As scientific break-throughs go it’s really is up there with evolution and relativity, isn’t it? 

Now, this is big news but Volvic aren’t fools. They realised that a scientific discovery of this magnitude is going to be pretty hard for the average Nigel to swallow. That’s why they employed Jimmy!

Don’t be fooled by the fact that Jimmy looks a bit of a spod. Maybe he’s not cut his hair in, ooh, 10 years and maybe he wears a headband when doing unspecified sports-type exercise. So what? Because despite his dreadful hair and dress sense fool you, Jimmy’s just like you and me. And if Jimmy’s doing the Volvic 14 Day Challenge then so should you!

But he’s off to a nervy start. When first faced with the Challenge he’s naturally intimidated by its scale (”That’s a lot of water” *gulp*!) but with the golden carrot of *feeling* *better* dangling in front of him he’s prepared to give “drinking water” a bash.

Hoorah for you, Jimmy!

And the challenge is a true voyage of discovery for Jimmy because, despite still being blissfully unaware on day 6 that water is readily available almost everywhere in the country, by day 10 he’s found out that drinking water is nearly as easy to do as eating food!

And by day 14, when he’s playing that unspecified sport – one that’s played in a cage, requires a baseball glove and an exceedingly camp run – Jimmy’s completed the challenge and, would you credit it, he *feels* *better*. 

Hmm.

I hate to be the one to piss in your volcan mineral water pool but this whole 14 Day Challenge is such a horribly transparent marketing ploy (”Hey if we convince them they need to drink 1.5 litres a day for 2 weeks then that’s 21 x 1 litre bottles @ £0.63 equals… billions!”).

To call drinking water ever day for 2 weeks a challenge is beyond patronising (the only people who would fail to complete are those who can’t be trusted with scissors, not even paper ones).

To make the unmeasurable claim that completing will make you *feel* *better* is so Mickey Mouse that it’s not even funny.

Finally, the benfits of drinking lots of water have been debunked - once you’re re-hydrated, you’re re-hydrated. The rule isn’t the more the drink the better it is for you. And, unless your mother was a camel, there’s no bnefit to drinking a lot of water for 2 weeks if you’ve quenched your thirst after one glass of water. 

So come on Volvic, cut the Jimmy crap and bring back the far less scientifically questionable talking dinosaurs.

This advert for RED Driving School features a few of my advertisment pet hates: misleading claims, actors pretending to be real people and terrible, terrible puns:

“You don’t need experience, just the DRIVE to do something new” the advert man tells us.

Brilliant.

“So RUN OVER to the phone and call us now because all the INDICATORS show you’re on TRACK to a career in the FAST LANE. But don’t REVERSE your decision [to become a driving instructor] or I’ll have to BOOT you in the face – really hard.”

Doesn’t it sound like being a driving instructor really is a laugh a minute?

Amazingly, despite all of the hilarious driving-based puns, my favourite part of the ad though is the actress’ particularly convincing performance. Those cold, dead eyes say so much, don’t they? As she stares dolefully into the camera, they’re screaming “I was going to be the next Anita Dobson but look at me now!”.

Poor love.

She’s the one who comes out with the laughable claim that by becoming a RED driving instructor you can “choose your own working hours.”:

“Now I fit my career around my family life – it’s totally flexible”

Of course, what with this being TV’s Worst Adevrts, I haven’t done any actual research but I reckon that the reality of it is that most of the “over a million people” learning to drive each year are 17 and go to school or college. So there’s probably going to be a lot of evening and weekend work – at least, there will be if you want to make that £30,000 a year.

But don’t worry, you can see your family some other time so let’s just gloss over that fact with another terrible pun:

“If you’ve got a licence then we’ve got the KEYS – to a new career”

Oh, you driving instructors are such wags. You really are.