Another month, another advert banned by the ASA.

This time round the ASA banned Eve Cameron and her lies about Pentapeptides from our screens. Yes, no more will we have to listen to Eve bang on about the “World Congress of Dermatology” or their “very exciting” – if not somewhat unproven – findings.

But I can’t help but think that this whole sorry, creamy mess could have been avoided if only Olay had gone down the same path as L’Oreal do in their Penelope Cruz adverts.

Because, if listen carefully, through the veils of her amazingly thick Spannish accent she can just about be heard to utter the “For me” disclaimer before stating anything that could be misconstrued as a “fact” by someone without a mind of their own.

These two simple words absolve L’Oreal of any responsibility for the crazy things Penelope might say – “For me L’Oreal’s Elnett is a great way to see off stalkers”, “For me L’Oreal Excellence Creme makes any tart or pie even tastier”, for example. 

So come on Olay, it’s time you learnt that an international movie star – even one with all the charisma and acting ability of a hermorrhoid – reading “For me” from a cue card is not only more convincing to the feeble-minded, celebrity-obsessed consumer than something about “a congresses”, it’s more likely to get past the ASA too.

Worst Advert of the Month Results

Anyways, enough of that, on to the main event – the voting:

1. Oven Pride – Oven Cleaner in a Bag
2. Diet Coke – Duffy
3. Glade – Touch and Fresh – I Want to Poo at Paul’s House
4. Picture Loans – Dad’s Found Your Scooter
5. The Skills Centre – Tony?

So, as you can see, this month’s winner of the TV’s Worst Adverts Worst Advert of the Month Award goes to the breath-takingly patronising Oven Pride advert. An advert that I thought was going to score a perfect 5 but tailed off a little towards the end there.

Well done all the same.

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What Happened to the Fancy Dress Competition?

Look, let’s agree on this – I’ll never mention it again if you never mention it again. Deal?

Here’s a cracking Bad Ad submission from Greybob for Wilkinson Sword’s snappily named “Quattro for Women Bikini” razor (it’s nice to know that we’re so prudish they couldn’t even add the word “Line” on to the end):

Is there a less olbique way of suggesting that the Wilkinson Sword Quattro for Women Bikini is for trimming your bush? They even provide shapes that you might like prune it down too, the “landing strip”, the “dairylea triangle”, the “Hitler moustache” and the lesser seen “round one”.

They’ve missed the scraggly naked bare bush though, perhaps there’s no way of extending the visual euphemism to the Brazilian.

There’s a woman who lives down the street who has her bush done in the shape of a squirrel. She doesn’t use a Wilkinson Sword Quattro for Women Bikini though – she gets a man into do it with a big pair of sheers. 

I wonder if she keeps her merkin as trim?

Here’s a funny one for you – it’s the greatest footballer of his generation, with a reputation for taking himself too seriously, sending himself up in an advert for an estate car:

Yes, it’s Eric Cantona in the new Renault Laguna Estate advert and I’m kind of on the fence over it.

I can’t help but smile as Cantona ironically enthuses over the features of the new car (“Just one finger. Magic.”), but at the same am left feeling that the advert fails because Cantona’s performance says “You can love this car but you’ll be a pretentious, arrogant wanker if you do”. And who really wants to be that? Apart from BMW drivers, of course.

Plus there are a few of places where Eric’s accent is so thick that I can’t understand what the monkey he’s banging on about. But when it’s in his now-classic “Seagull” delivery it really doesn’t matter what he’s saying.

As I say, I’m on the fence but what do you think is this another display of the Frenchman’s genius or does it miss the mark by a mile?

Hello you crackers.

Hello you dried up old hags salivating like crazed dogs over scraps of meat.

Hello you deluded fucks washing down your KFC in the pretence that it’s not your fault you’re the size of a whale.

Hello you Diet Coke drinkers.

Yes, this is the new advert for Diet Coke featuring a nervous sounding Eliza Doolittle impersonator – or Duffy as she prefers to be called – and the butt clenchingly awful and equally meaningless “Hello You” tag line - a greeting, you might remember, made popular by the plank of wood with a huge chin in Friends.

The only glimmer of hope I can offer you about this advert is that you’re not alone in hating it. In fact this is the most popular bad ad submission in the history of TV’s Worst Adverts. So far 1.8 million people have begged for it to be included in the annals of TV advertising shitness.

Amongst the many items of Diet Coke advert related bad news is the fact it’s here for you to watch again:

Now maybe I’m not the best person to comment on Diet Coke adverts because a) I haven’t been through the menopause b) I’m not morbidly obese c) on the 2 occasions that I’ve actually drunk Diet Coke it’s made me be sick through my nose bu,t you know what, I’m going to do it anyway.

This advert makes my skin crawl.

Duffy’s nasally fake-retro voice is nausiating at best but in this advert she manages to whine her way through “I’ve Got to be Me” like a pug being suffocated and sodomised at the same time. She, in essence, sounds like a dog playing out the death scene of Michael Hutchence. What I’m trying to say is that Duffy is the dog version of Michael Hutchence death – you know, in this advert at least.

Why is she riding a bike? Why is she riding it through a super market? Why is she singing a Sammy Davis Jr song with all the personality of a used tea bag?

These are all valid questions, I’ll grant you that, but they pale in significance when put next to the question on all of our lips:

“Why do you sound like a dog with a belt round it’s neck hanging from the back of a hotel room door who’s possibly been dabbling in some bizarre sexual game that’s gone tragically wrong whilst on tour in Australia? Why? Oh why? Oh why?”

Still it could have been worse – they could have asked Joss Stone to do it.

If you thought TV’s Worst Adverts was overly picky when it came to criticising adverts check out this this complaint to the ASA.

Apparently, amongst other things, Alcohol Concern were *concerned* that the advert for the *alcoholic* Stella Artois 4% lager drink featuring a man rubbing suncream into a woman’s shoulders “linked alcohol to sexual success”.

What a sad indictment of a pathetic life thinking “rubbing a woman’s shoulders counts as sexual success” really is.

Anyways, the good news for all 40 year old virgins still living with their mums is that the ASA didn’t uphold the complaint – so there’ll still be plenty more shoulder rubbing action for them to fire their yogurt cannons to in the future.

Well, well, well – look who’s back.

Yes, 2 of the world’s top sportsmen and Thierry Henry are back on our screens in a new Gillette advert – this time for something called Gillette Fusion Power Phenom.

Their return might come as something of a surprise as the previous advert – Gillette Champions – was voted as the worst of 2008 by Campaign. An advert whose shitness was largely due to its 3 stars having absolutely zero on screen chemistry or charisma. In fact, their acting was so terribly that Drench managed to get more personality out of an actual puppet than Henry, Woods and Federer could manage in the Gillette ad.

So surely only a fool would bring them back – you know, only a fool or someone who’s seen the sales figures. One of the two.

Reassuringly though is that the new advert isn’t any better than the previous one. Based around the toe-curlingly made-up word “Phenom”. This, according to the advert, is short for “phenomenal” but only a pathetic wannabe hipster or middle-management wank stain would ever dare utter it in public.

“Have you heard the new Boris Brejcha EP? It’s phenom.”

“How does the new Audi RS4 handle? Oh, totally phenom!”

To make matters worse, the new advert’s set to what sounds like a late 90′s “corporate song”. The kind of uptempo, supposedly motivational yet ultimately meaningless tripe that the HR department loves but everyone else in the company hates. It’s a tune that’s designed to “empower you as an individual” but in reality just makes you desperately want to cut your own ears off then crawl inside your own anus just so you don’t have to hear it ever again.  Ever.

The icing on the cake is some more spectacularly terrible CGI work in which each of the stars play their sport with a ball that is actually the Earth (How about “Use Gillette and you’ll have the world at your feet”?). This CGI enables Tiger Woods to play golf with one hand in his pocket. Roger Federer to balance the ball/globe on his racket before hitting through his legs and Thierry Henry to do some ball skills that culminate in a spin so preposterously fake that even the makers of House of Flying Daggers would think it’s “a bit over the top”.

Sadly for Gillette, even with all this CGI trickery at their fingertips, they still couldn’t make the 3 men to look even the slightest bit comfortable in each others company.  

So just how bad is this new Gillette advert? Christ, it’s phenom.

What does that mean?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

I realise that this is a bit of an old one but I thought as I’ve added the new Visa advert with Bill Shannon simply becuse it’s a carbon copy it would be unfair not to include this effort from Fiat.

And if anything this advert for the Fiat Grande Punto is an ever bigger offender against all things worthy – a.k.a. taking a work of art and using it to make some quick and drity cash – then the Visa one is. Fiat even go so far as to use the same bloody music!

Anway don’t listen to me, judge for yourself:

Fiat Grande Punto Trampoline

Roel Wouters - zZz is playing: Grip

Via the wonderful Adturds.

Another advert, another shameless rip-off: 

Well, although it might not quite be a rip-off – the Visa version does at least feature Bill Shannon – it is a perfect copy of the music video for Rjd2′s “Work It Out”:

Lazy, Visa. Lazy.

If there’s one thing I hate right now it’s being bullied about my “green credentials”. Hate it.

What makes me hate it even more is just how unjust it seems to bully me. Because even though (“Can I shock you?”) I’m not a scientist and I haven’t done any personal research into whether global warming actually exists, I’m not over into “fucking up Earth”. Plus as some reasonable sane looking people seem to think that global warming does exist and as I’m a “better safe than sorry” kind of bloke I’m trying to do my bit and be more mindful of my carbon footprint.

For example, I’ve put out that tyre fire which was raging at the bottom of my garden for a while. And I genuinely can’t remember the last time I ate an orangutan – be it deep fried or boiled. 

As I say, I’m just “doing my bit”.

So here’s an example of the completely unjust green bullying that sends me absolutely enviro-mental (“I’ll get my coat”). I was genuinely asked this question by a guy working on the checkout at my local Waitrose supermarket (I know, get me, shopping at Waitrose!):

“Do you want a “Bag for Life” or do you want one that destroys the planet?”

Hmm, let me see. Do I want a “Bag for Life” or one that destroys the planet? Before I decide, could you tell me, do you have any bags that steal sweets from children or push grannies in front of buses as well? No? Shame, because that’s the level of bastardry I normally look for when selecting my carrier bag.

Well, I’ll have to settle for one that simply destroys the planet then, please.

Things are even worse on TV particularly in the adverts. If it’s not cars inspired by nature then it’s energy companies recycling stuff that probably makes no difference to the rain forest.

And now thanks to Apple’s advert for their new MacBook we’re even being bullied just for reading the dearly beloved TV’s Worst Adverts blog.

That’s right because unless you’re surfing the web using a new Apple MacBook or some device that you’ve cobbled together that’s powered by your own farts then you’re not being as “green” as you could be.

Research shows that non-MacBook computers and laptops use so much energy that everytime you download a porn film, a tree in the Amazon rain forest dies. I alone have deforested an area the size of Wales in just the last month.

And if that’s not bad enough, when the time comes and you condemn your computer to rot in a hole just outside Milton Keynes for eternity – or at the very least, to be shipped to Nigeria – then you’ll be releasing environmentally harmful toxins like Mercury.

And that, my friend, is a crime against the World’s air that’s even more dispicable than the one being commited by Apple’s Chinese “iPod City” factory.

You heartless cunts.

Right, enough ranting – I’m off to make myself I nice cup of tea. A task, I’ll have you know, that uses so much electricity it’s tantamount to raping a panda bear.

Ta ta.

Men. Aren’t they just the most sickeningly feckless creatures?

At least that’s the picture of “men” Oven Pride portray in their latest advert for “oven and BBQ cleaner in a bag”.

And it’s so outrageously patronising to men and such a depressing picture of married life that I get an overwhelming urge to kick my eyeballs out every time I see it.

The advert features a couple who are straight out of a 1970′s sitcom – she’s a sour-faced battle-axe in training and he’s a simpering emasculated idiot. Their relationship is so loving that they can barely bring themselves to look at each other. So instead they take part in a bizarre silent and deeply menacing gurning competition.

There she stands – hands on hip, desperately trying to suck her lips clean off her face – as a statuesque representation of womankind’s disgust at the inadequacies of men. Whilst he fidgets uneasily on his stool, presumably because he’s so idiotic he’s put his underpants on the wrong way.

This tension is only broken by an aggressively condescending female voice over claiming that Oven Pride is “so easy – a man can do it”. On hearing this, the woman thrusts the box of Oven Pride into the man’s chest with the force of an elephant on a pogo stick.

Relieved that his internal organs are still internal the man sets to work cleaning the oven.

But it’s not all bad news for the man. From the look on his face, and the mildly masturbatory way in which he shakes the bag, cleaning the oven gives him an almost orgasmic pleasure.

In fact with just a few more shakes of the bag and a shift onto the other buttock to contort his back-to-front underpants a little tighter and… yes, yes, there’s the face of a man who’s just inadvertently ejaculated whilst cleaning a household appliance:

Now I’m sure that this Oven Pride is supposed to be ironic. It hopes to get house wives all round the country knowingly tutting and shaking their heads at “men never doing the bloody cleaning!”.

But it paints such a depressingly misanthropic picture of marital life and such a staggeringly patronising picture of men that any irony is completely lost.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s depressing and patronising?