If you can’t afford it gambling is one of the most ridiculous reckless things you can do.

Even if it’s a dead cert.

Even if you got the tip off a your mate whose uncle knows a bloke who knows John McCririck’s cleaner.

Even if it’s not a problem and you can handle it because it’s just not a problem and you can handle it. Look, it’s not a problem. I CAN HANDLE IT!

And what better way to (inadvertently) highlight just how ridiculously reckless gambling at, for example, Ladbrokescasino.com is by comparing it to rock-climbing using only your chin, or to swimming with sharks while covered in pork-products, or to skydiving using a crisp packet as a parachute?

Sadly, the ASA didn’t see it that way; so here are the 3 banned adverts:

The Climbing One:

The Shark One:

The Parachute One:

You know what it’s like – you’ve had a hard day writing, directing and starring in your latest high-minded, holier-than-thou tirade against a social injustice – or Ocean’s 14, to give it its proper title – and you’re really, really gagging for a Nespresso.

Well, as luck has it, you’re just round the corner of your local Nespresso shop. What are the chances?

Ahh, browsing rack after rack of your favourite Nespresso capsule blends is truly one of the last bastions of humanity, isn’t it?

Just one problem; the shop’s full of beautiful, yet sycophantic, women. Will these damned sauce-pots not just leave you alone to enjoy the art of the espresso?

That’s life though, I suppose!

Yes, this is Sir George Clooney starring in the latest Nescafe Nespresso advert – what else?

And seeing as George is the most intelligent, sophisticated and charming whore-bag working in Hollywod today it seems natural that Nespresso has saddled him up, mounted him and whipped his bare buttocks with the giant greenback riding crop in the hope that some of our George-lust will rub off on their coffee machines – although not literally, of course.

That’s a latte noone wants to drink. 

A great plan, I think you’ll agree, except for the the fact that Nespresso machines are as sophisticated as an evening of Lambrini fuelled jelly wrestling round at Kerry Katona’s house.

Or maybe slightly less cruelly, Nespresso machanies are the coffee equivalent of a box of wine. Yes, it looks like wine – except it’s coffee – and it tastes like wine – except it’s coffee – but the only people who would willingly have one on their kitchen worktop are aspirational chavs.

Anyways, I fancied a bit of chav coffee quaffing action, Cloonster style, so I popped down to my local Whittard Of Chelsea shop but all the windows were boarded up and instead of a hoard of extremely attractive women there was just a piss soaked tramp asleep in the doorway.

That’s life though, I suppose.

Here’s another TWA special from the very generous Simon Breadbin. Enjoy!

‘Where’s Sarah? She should be here by now.’

‘Sorry I’m late, I was just designing this t-shirt.’

‘Ooh, yeah! Nice.’

Just what the fuck was Sarah thinking? Her FRIENDS are WAITING for her and she’s poncing about designing a fucking T-SHIRT?!

They’re all LATE now.

Except of course they aren’t, are they? Because this ‘Animal Crossing’, the nauseatingly cutesy game aimed at day-care centres and the mentally subnormal.

If there really existed such a world made of sugar, then there must be an alternate dimension made wholly from puke, and I know where I’d rather be.

Are we to believe that these are the same ‘advert women’ who routinely humiliate their buffoon husbands with their mastery of just about fucking everything, reduced to simpering at each other online and planning a virtual shopping trip?

I hate this advert as it reminds me that one of the last bastions of male immaturity has been hijacked, distorted beyond all recognition, and then sold back to us with a pink fucking ribbon on it.

The game featured in this advert reminds me of a fluffy version of the  Ludocvico Technique. It seems Nintendo are trying to condition our minds into believing the world is nothing but Autumnal days sat in the forrest or being wrapped in a blanket with a mug of hot tea.

It’s a world that mirrors our very own. You eat an apple, it eats an apple. You drink tea, it drinks tea.

But, before you know it, you’re mirroring their world.

They have their hair cut, you have you hair cut. They sleep with the lead games designer of Animal Crossing, you sleep with the lead games designer of Animal Crossing. They send their life savings to Satoru Iwata, you… well, you get the drift.  

And worst of all, it’s a world in which your pathetic attempts at fashion design – attempts that, let’s be honest, would embarrass a retarded child had they made them – become master pieces for you to show off to your simpering, slack jawed, idiotic friends.

Nintendos vision of the future scares the Warios out of me and it should do you too – or you might end up like Sarah and her friends.

“Oh, yeah! Nice.”

*Shivers down my spine*.

Thanks again to Simon Breadbin for submitting this bad ad.

The challenge faced by advertisers of High Definition TV’s on what are, quite frankly, pathetic, non-HD, Luddite teles is this generations “advertising colour TV on black and white sets”.

But a TV that can “make snooker even more enjoyable”, amazingly, isn’t much of a selling point these days.

No, HD is all about being able to see stuff you couldn’t see before.

You know, like being able to see James Bond doing some kind of pastiche of that bit at the end of Empire Strikes Back:

And in a World exclusive TV’s Worst Adverts can reveal the dialogue from the next instalment of these Sony adverts:

Goldfinger: “M never told you what happened to your father.”
James Bond: “She told me enough. She told me you killed him.”
Goldfinger: “No. I am your father”

Yeah, it turns out that Goldfinger is actually James Bond’s father. Who knew? Who knew?

Shockingly at the end of the advert Goldfinger actually does cut James Bond’s nuts off – to which Bond dryly retorts: “Bollocks!”.

Not really.

In reality, I don’t know what the hell this advert is really supposed to be showing us apart from the very obvious “green screening” of Daniel Craig – this generations “you can see the strings!”.

I get the feeling that this advert’s message is as simple as “Watching a Sony HD TV will make you as cool as James Bond”. In much the same way that the Barclay Card advert says “Spending money on your Barclay Card will make you as cool as James Bond” and the Ford Ka advert says “Driving a new Ford Ka will make you as cool as James Bond”.

And, although this message might seem exceptionally shallow, I think that we all agree that the coolest part of the latest James Bond film was when he drove his Ford Ka to Curry’s and bought a new Sony HD TV with his Barclay Card.

So, on the whole, magical stuff.

Toshiba Upscaling TV Advert

Here’s the new advert for Toshiba’s Upscaling TV’s – which “enhances standard definition content to near high definition quality” apparently.

I quite like this advert but can’t help but feel it’s what the Matrix would have been like if it was directed by Gus Van Sant.

Why is this advert still on TV?

It’s bizarre mix of heady, aspirational guff combined with a completely mental claim that makes it just so very confused.

Make my clothes smell of “white diamonds and lotus flower”, you say? Oh no, I don’t think so.

After all, any self-respecting, social-climber is going to do themselves no favours at all by claiming they smell of “white diamonds”.

“Ooh, you smell nice. What is it?” – the concierge at the new spa you’ve just joined might ask.
“It’s the smell of luxury – white diamonds” – you’d reply.
“Our health club doesn’t want idiots like you as members. Get out!” – he’d be forced to tell you.

And research has shown that you can only make yourself sound cheaper if you claim that the scent your clothes are infused with is, in fact, “white diamonique“.

Ultimately the big problem for me is that, probably like most sane people, I’m at a complete loss as to what white diamonds smell like.

I’m guessing they smell of pretentious bullshit.

I could be wrong of course, because there was a while when, as a impoverished student, I used to smell of Diamond White on a fairly regular basis, and that’s definitely not the kind of odour that would go down too well in a swanky restaurant.

Anyways, whatever it actually smells of, here are a couple more fragrances that I hope Bold will let us infuse our clothes with:

• White Elephant - The fragrance of a gift you wished you hadn’t received.
• Jimmy White - The smell of World Championship failure.
• White Supremacy - The stench of ignorance and hatred.

If you’ve got any more fragrances you wish you could infuse your clothes with, please feel free to add them below.

Note From Silky

Here’s the first post from one of TV’s Worst Adverts new writers – Ian Smith. So go on, have a read and make him feel nice and at home here on TWA.

Decisive Moments

I’m really worried about the guys at Vodafone. Not content with being an worldwide mobile phone giant, they seem to always play cupid.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love a happy ending (that’s why I’m hoping the next BT ad will end with that smug bloke from that cheap as chips sitcom jumps off a cliff because he “oh look I’m dating an older woman, how very post modern” marriage is up the spout).

But when it comes to adverts striving for a happy ending, whenever you talk about it, the conversation always seem to goes like this:

“Oh you seen that ad where etc etc etc?”
“Yeah, what’s it for?”
“Dunno.”

Which kinds of defies the point of an advert. Adverts are just adverts, they’re not remaking Shakespeare – which is my main problem with this ad.

This advert is mostly shown in F1 ad breaks, so apart from being really annoying to the viewers hoping to see a ten car pile up but instead are watching animal hybrids’ sexy dancing, it’s pretty easy to advertise to them.

All they wanna see is cars, cars, cars. That’s why there watching.

After all, these are people who will pay hundreds of pounds to see something they could probably see at Tesco’s car parks for free at 3 o’clock in the morning.

So they got the first part right by placing Lewis in his very fast, very expensive car but it all goes wrong from there.

But then they shoehorn this “we only get one chance” storyline in which Lewis seems to have taken on a part time job as taxi driver delivering forlorn softies to there loved ones for one last kiss.

It’s kinda like the Renault “Nicole” adverts but with a bit more than just Va Va Voom.

Either that or Lewis found the wife of the Steward who docked him the points recently and decides to show the bad side of Lewis by ploughing into her at 180 mph.

Ever since their “Time Thief” advert it seems like Vodafone are hell bent on saving the notion of love.

And where will it end? Next week, don’t be too surprised if you see Lewis Hamilton using his very fast car to end world hunger.

There are few things I enjoy watching more on TV than a deer with lovely pert breast indulging in some sex play with a bear in a very small pair of pants.

Except maybe watching a whole menagerie of anthropomorphised and scantily clad animals performing a saucy dance routine.

Yes, that’s the one.

And I gets a right thirst on from watching that, I tell you.

Those French are mental, aren’t they?

Thanks to Cath and Dave Newman for submitting this bad ad.

As we all know, in the list of important things in life in modern Britain, cleanliness comes second only to Godliness – just ahead of cappuccino-liness and complain-liness.

But on the flip side of this, also in modern Britain it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stay clean of both body and mind.

Walk down any city street and you’ll be wading knee deep through dog turds and choking on bendy-bus exhaust fumes.

Turn on the telly and in between the endless programs of violence, profanity and semi-nudity (or the Olympic Games as they’re more popularly known) there are graphic scenes of men kissing each other.

Disgusting.

No, if you want to get to Heaven now-a-days, the only sensible solution is to lock yourself and your whole family safely in the cupboard under the stairs.

But God, wouldn’t it be terrible if mindlessly following this strict Godliness/cleanliness doctrine turned us and our children (think of the children) into unfeeling, blocky robots from the 1970′s?

TV’s Worst Adverts agrees with Persil’s sentiment that you’ve got to let your kids have some freedom to play and enjoy themselves without the fear that they’ll be run over by binge-drinking, illegal-immigrant on a joy ride at the tax payers expense or being raped in the ear by the local gang of paedophiles but…

If dirt is so good Persil, why don’t we just leave it on our clothes as a sort of badge of honour?

Because you’d go out of business, that’s why.

So dirt is good people but, please, wash it off ever once in a while will you?

Thanks to Alex and Keith for submitting this bad ad.

And a special thanks to Littlefishey for their amusing words.

Over the next few weeks I’ll try and get as many of these up as I can find on the Tube – any old company cashing in on their sponsorship of the Beijing 2008 Olympic games.

Here’s Scottish Widows’ effort:

You might think it odd that Scottish Widows, a life insurance company, are sponsoring the Olympic Games but if I remember rightly it was Baron de Coubertin who coined the Olympic ideal:

“Swifter, Higher, Stronger and 20% Off Stake Holder Pensions If You Apply Online”.

Wasn’t it?

Even those of us with only a rudimentary grasp of human biology know that there are 2 types of sex configurations.

But now-a-days what with all this sexual equality guff (women wearing trousers?) and an obesity epidemic that makes most men have breasts that would put Katie Price to shame, it’s getting harder to tell the sexes apart without asking people to drop their trousers.

Fortunately for the less gropey, science has come up with an answer – the Keys Factor.

The Keys Factor (KF) enables laymen to judge whether the person they’re about to sleep with (either for professional or purely pleasure reasons) is of the male or female persuasion.

Here’s how it works: someone with a high KF score is very manly and likely to be a man. Someone with a low KF score is very feminine and likely to be a lady.

Simple.

Using the KF scale scientists have proven that they are catagorically no females in some parts of Eastern Europe and not a single female in all of South America. They have also found that the male professional cyclist is, on average, 57% more female than French women. FACT.

Despite this overwhelming evidence I was dubious that lowering the Keys Factor could make a woman more feminine, so I did a little test of my own.

I took the hairiest woman I could find on the streets of London and made her sit in a bath of Veet for an entire day.

Amazingly, it worked!

If you don’t believe me, check out the before and after pictures below:

Before:

After:

She’s quite the stunner, I think you’ll agree.

Note to Reader: My lawyers have asked me to point out that under no circumstances should you sit in a bath of Veet for an entire day.

God only knows what it might actually do.

Judge for yourself.