These are exciting times here at TV’s Worst Adverts. March marks the 2nd anniversary of TWA first donkey punching the worst in UK TV adverts. Although on a down note, they do call them the terrible 2′s so maybe there won’t be much to look forward to in the next 12 months.

Anyways, as a special birthday present to you all, the ASA were very kind and banned the Flora Buttery advert with Gary Rhodes. Apparently they thought that Flora’s fast and loose use of “statistics” was likely to mislead just about everybody in Britain – except for you clever things who read TWA, of course.

Good old ASA.

Without further ado, here’s February’s top 5 worst adverts, as voted for by you:

1. Picture Loans – Dad’s Found Your Scooter
2. The Skills Centre – Tony?
3. Sky+ – Utter Simplicity
4. DFS – Nickleback Rockstar Part II
5. Picture Loans – An Adult Conversation

So, after a one month absence Picture Loans reclaim the TV’s Worst Adverts top spot.

Shameless Self Promotion Part 1

Here’s part one of my shameless self promotion double header – don’t forget about the TV’s Worst Adverts 2nd birthday fancy dress party that is now officially open!

Shameless Self Promotion Part 2

If you can just about tolerate TV’s Worst Advert in humourous internet based TV adverts blog form then you’ll probably like the TV’s Worst Adverts Facebook group a similar or slightly less amount.

So why not join and find out?

Go on, there’s quite literally some discussion going on RIGHT NOW about the worst adverts on UK TV.

Subscribe to TWA’s RSS Feed

Like reading about rubbish TV adverts but too lazy to go as far as “clicking a few buttons and doing a bit of typing” to get it? Then why not subscribe to the TV’s Worst Adverts’ RSS Feed and get the latest rubbish sent straight to your feed reader?

If there’s one thing we’ve learnt from the whole dirty little “Gary Rhodes & Floar Buttery” affair, it’s that Gary Rhodes will do some very degrading things for money – except speak to 200 members of the public about whether they prefer Flora or Lurpak, obviously.

And if there’s one thing that we’ve had confirmed, it’s that advertisers are prepared to lie to us about the most coma-inducingly mundane things just to get a few extra sales. They’ll lie about whether people like one yellow fat more than another. About whether a cook with spikey hair is actually on a mission. About whether “crisps” in a “bag” are “amazing”.

Think I’m being a little hard on those good old advertisers?

Well I’m pretty certain that anyone who genuinely believes that the very fact crisps are now sold in a bag is “amazing!” or that Peter Jones sits in an open-plan office and fixes his own IT problems is either a liar or, let’s be honest, an idiot.

Note to reader: Advertisers are liars and we are the idiots.

In fairness to the advertising industry, it’s not as if they’re all Jeffery Archers and they haven’t faked the moon landings. But they are liars nonetheless.

Normally all this lying takes place behind the very polished veneer of “this shit will make your lives better“.  

But Peugeot decided to give us a tantalising glimpse behind the curtan.  In the advert for the 407 – Made by Perfectionists – they show us just how much they lie.

They remove a fly from the head light. The heartlessly bastards even delete a token of eternal love carved into a tree. And worst of all, we see the horrifying process involved in turning the driver of the 407 into the most boring man in Britain:

The one they don’t show us is what the 407 looks like before the Peugeot computer nerd got his hands on it. So, I’m pleased to tell you I have the first photo of the new 407:

Peugeot 407 – Made by Liars.

As you’re all well aware – been in your diary for some time now, I expect – TV’s Worst Adverts is turning 2 on the 11th March.

To celebrate this momentous event, all through March TWA will be holding the TV’s Worst Adverts 2nd Birthday Fancy Dress Competition!

To enter, you need to dress up as your favourite/most hated character from a UK TV advert and take a photo of yourself.

Then either email it to me or upload it to the competition’s official Flickr group by the 14th March.

I’ll then select the 10 best entries (extra kudos for recreating the scene as well) and then put them to the public to vote for the winner – who will receive a plethora (currently including CDs, DVDs and £30′s worth of Amazon vouchers) of top quality prizes and not just a few bags of mints like last year  – announced at the end of March.

If you’re looking for some inspiration try Howard from the Halifax, Jose from Polaris World, those freaky eyebrow kids from Cadburys, you get the idea.

So that’s the competition, get your kit on and get snapping and I look forward to seeing just how brilliant your entries are.

Right, I’m off to slip into my tight, red Virgin Atlantic uniform so I can look like an air-matress from the 80′s – not for the competition though, just because I like it.

Cheers,

Silky.

Prize Appeal 2009

If you’d like to donate a prize (however big or small but nothing too weird, please) to the TV’s Worst Adverts 2nd Birthday Fancy Dress Competition then not only would you get my enternal (well, a couple of weeks worth) thanks you’ll get a permanent link back to your site too.

Drop me a mail and let me know.

The What the Monkey category was made for adverts like this:

No. I’ve no idea either.

What’s this? Bob Dylan letting an advertiser use “Blowing in the Wind” in an advert?

Judas!

Judas!

Still on the plus side at least it’s for the totally ethical Co-Operative and it’s not as if he’s selling his integrity for Victoria’s Secret or some planet destroying SUV.

Right? Right?

Thanks to TimmyHavoc for submitting this bad ad.

Here’s a quick bad ad submission from Anthony.

Everytime I see this overly-long advert, it makes me cringe.

The worst bit of it is where everybody is gathered around at the end rythmicly shouting “One one eight!”.

Just awful.

As every TV’s Worst Adverts fan worth their salt knows, Ghostbusters is one of my favourite films and I die a little bit inside each time I hear Ray Parker Jr straining out every line to the directory enquires based version of the Ghostbusters theme tune whilst simultaneously taking it up the poop chute off the 118 boys for a few dirty dollar.

It’s enough to make poor ghost-busting meta-psychologists cross their streams. It really is.

In a world exclusive I can bring to you the first draft of the new Ultralase advert featuring Jonathan Edwards and Steve Redgrave. Enjoy:

“Jonathan? How are things?”

“Steve. Same old, same old.”

“Must be 8 years since we competed together at the Games.”

“Where did you go?”

“Well, while I was competing with you I was having my wonky eyesight fixed.”

“Having your wonky eyesight fixed and competing at the same time?”

“Yeah, vision and competition. And Ultralase helped me see straight again.”

“Sounds easy.”

“It was. Getting A1 vision changed my life. Now I’m earning more money then I ever thought I could. Even the misses is happy. Oh and I was knighted.”

Is it me or does that remind you of anything?

Quite. The. Onscreen. Rapport.

Strokes aren’t funny.

They can kill you or, at the very least, make you look like you’re permanently watching the Hollyoaks omnibus. So I’m not going to make fun of people who’ve had strokes nor of teenagers who simply don’t realise they’re wasting the best years of their life.

But this advert has left me a little worried:

If you’re anything like me, watching that advert has made you extremely paranoid and you’re now permanently on stroke-watch. So to help save lives, here are those symptoms again:

• Difficulty smiling.
• Can’t lift their arms up.
• Slurred speech.

Hang on a minute. That sounds like everybody I catch the bus to work with in the mornings is having a stroke. This is much more serious then I first imagined.

Not really, only joking. They’re really just miserable bastards who hate their miserable lives and their miserable jobs that they’re grinding out for the sake their miserable families. But hey, that’s the Midlands for you. 

Back to strokes… the most of important symptom of all that you should look out for is the “forehead on fire”. If someone’s face is burning down quicker than the Australian bush then they’re are definitely having a stroke. Well, they’re either having a stroke or they’re a Nazi and they’ve just opened the Arc of the Covenant in some unholy ceremony on a God forsaken lump of rock in the middle of nowhere. 

It’s definitely one of the two though, so always check for a leather trench coat and swastika armband before you call the for the ambulance, just in case.

Here’s a bad ad submission from Simon that I’m publishing virtually in full as I suspect it will help bring to end what’s probably been a very cathartic journey for him: 

“Arrgghh, the gotomypc advert!

Two businessmen are about to give a presentation to the board. But, oh no disaster “The presentation is on the office computer”.

You’re in a presentation. The clue as to what to bring is in the meeting title. But the fucking idiot has forgotten it. Left it on his machine in the office. What a fuck nuts.

But come on, it’s happened to all of us, hasn’t it? Hmm. Not me, John.

Options open to him at this point:

1. Apologise and make up some bullshit file corruption error. Maybe wing a manual presentation, you know, like people who know what they’re talking about.

2. Get a squadron of birds to steal his work PC and bring it into the presentation (or pre-sentation, if you come from where the ad’s from). Please Note: If you’re going to do this, you’ll need some Wagner going on and some hilarious fluttering about. Give it some drama since, you know, I’m rooting for this dunce.

3. Ask to borrow a PC or to connect his laptop to their internet connection; opening a completely unapproved line with the outside world (Jack Bauer would word this better, but I’m so enraged…). Or maybe he could get all hi-tech and use his modem as a wireless for his laptop. But he’d probably struggle with this one; seeing as he’s got a presentation that day, and has forgetten to bring it with him. In fact the chances are his feet are still wet from trying to work out how to use the toilet that morning.

It’s your pick. 1, 2 or 3.

If you picked any of the above, you’re still in a presentation and you still look like an arse.”

Nice one, Simon. Hope it’s made you feel better.

Q. When it was OK to treat women as objects?

A. 1984.