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…

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.

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.

It’s interesting – or at least it is if you’re a loser with too much time on your hands – how someone (I am going to name names here, it’s Paul Merton) who is the God father of UK improv comedy and the king of the witty repost can be so very funny off the cuff and so very terrible at reading from a script.

Two cases in point – those God aweful Hancock remakes and Paul Merton in China. In both of which he proved he has the delivery of a doped up Jose Luis Hernandez when reading his pre-prepared material.

That doesn’t make him a bad man, of course. He’s not Ross Kemp for instance.

But I can’t help but think that everytime he stumbles his way through the supposedly off the cuff “Not very mobile for a phone” Paul Merton dies a little bit inside.

Please don’t do these any more, Paul. Please.

Note: Stephen Fry has always been a whorebag and it seems to have done him no harm so he can keep going.

Here’s part one of TV’s Worst Adverts‘ “Disturbingly Sexied Up” Trilogy – the Peugeot 308 DRIVESEXY advert, as submitted by the lovely Simon Breadbin:

2nd quarter 2009 and Britain Plc. is mired in recession.

A dolorous rain courses down the display windows of Teddington Peugeot as junior sales exec Jason sips his fourth cup of vending machine coffee and wonders how he will possibly meet his target for April. A slight breeze from the direction of the showroom door brings him back from his reverie and he notices the smartly dressed, attractive woman walking purposefully toward him.

“I’m looking for something kind of…Drivesexy” she smiles.
“What?”
“I’m looking for something kind of…Drivesexy” exact same tone and intonation.
“Er, we have these” he mumbles, while pointing awkwardly at a mundane hatchback.
“Fact me”

Jason manages to recover some of his composure and launches into his by now familiar sale pitch; he gains an inch in height and more importantly he gains an inch in girth as he leers into the woman.

“Well we take a regular 308 and we pour on the goodies. Mundane alloys, some other stuff that practically all cars have, and hold on to your knickers, CUSTOM FUCKING MATS LMAONADE!!!!eleven”.

Warming to his subject he presses on in a deliberately smug tone “Rather than just paying us the correct price, you give us 12.5k and we give you change (probably a pound)”.

2nd quarter 2009, and Britain Plc. is mired in recession. A dolorous rain courses down the display windows of Teddington Peugeot as junior sales exec Jason suddenly jerks awake, realising that he has dozed off again whilst listening to one of the worst car adverts in a long time on a perpetual loop in the showroom.

In the forty five seconds or so he was asleep, he has managed to spill his coffee……..and ejaculate.

He sells nothing that day.

Nice one, Simon.

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?

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.