Here’s another entry in the Scorn in the ASA category.

If you’re anything like me, when you heard that people had complained about Peter Jones’ co-star for having “pointy teeth, green-grey skin, large ears and goblinesque features” you thought “She might bot be the Mona Lisa but that’s a little harsh on Deborah Meaden”.

You’ll then have gone on to feel a little foolish when you found out that the complaints were actually about the Gremlins featured in the BT IT support advert and not about the sour-faced Dragon after all.

Who knew? Who knew?

It does however, turn out that 11 mummies and daddies complained to the ASA that their little prince and princesses got so scared by the advert that they went on to have “nightmares”.

Now, I’m not going to be too critical of the children that were frightened by the Gremlins though, because as a child I had the bejesus scared out of me on a weekly basis by the children’s TV programme Worzel Gummidge.

For all you cocky, city dwelling ex-kids a TV programme about a scarecrow that COMES TO LIFE (yeah, that’s right, bold and capitals) might not seem that bad. But I lived in the countryside, surrounded by fields inhabited by literally hundreds scarecrows which thanks to a kids TV programme I thought COULD COME TO LIFE!

Which sicko thought that was a suitable topic for kids? Honestly.

Anyways, for those of you with a mental age over 4 or those hidden behind a settee, here’s the advert with the frightening Peter Jones and those hilarious Gremlins (I think I got those the right way round):

Just a quick apology to say that we’re having some technical difficulties here at TWA towers so some things are appearing then disappearing - like the voting icons.

Fuck knows why, but I’m working on it.

Cheers, Silky.

I bet you’re pretty pleased with your life, aren’t you?

What with your hair 100% free of grey.

And your shiny new Mondeo.

Oh yeah and saving the environment by watching the Olympics.

In fact, you think things are so good you walk round naked from the waist down so the whole world can see how lucky the good lady wife is, don’t you?

God, life is just one great big baby’s arm holding an apple swinging in the breeze, isn’t it?

Well let me be the one to tell you, you’re wrong.

Your life is empty, emotionless, desolate - little more than a pimple on the arse of human existence. And no one ever sees that hair-on-a-gnats-leg you call a cock for one simple reason - you’re in Low Definition.

In fact, the definition of your life is so low that you’re not officially *living*. Yes, you’re plugged in, but you’re on stand-by. And if you died, as you sit there reading this, you wouldn’t notice and neither would anyone else.

To add insult to injury, you’ve no way of feeling love. That feeling you get inside your underpants (on the off chance you’re wearing any) when someone brushes past you a little too closely to be a mistake is just the cockroach in your brain pulling another lever, pushing another button.

You’re a human wax cylinder in the age of digital love downloads.

God, I pity you. No, that’s wrong. I don’t pity you, I despise you. You are everything that is wrong with this world. You might as well just kill yourself.

Mightn’t you?

Well, no actually, because thanks to Panasonic there is another way. You could buy one of their Viera PZ81 TVs (with FreeSat HD built in).

Because buying the Viera PZ81 TV (with FreeSat HD built in) will make such a massive difference to your life - if not the whole of human kind - it’s like the moon landings, the discovery of penicillin, and the big JC all rolled into one 42 inch piece of “slightly off black” plastic.

Wonders will never cease. You’ll finally be able to experience love and hate and life and death and people running round a race track and a woman falling off a trapeze just like you’ve always dreamt you’d be able to do.

Or… or… it might only be a 42 inch piece of “slightly off black” plastic that makes absolutely no difference to the way you live your life.

I don’t know.

But from watching the advert it’s definitely one of those two options. Yes, definitely:

Oh Nickelback - Canadian *rock* *band*, players of the same song, owners of a rhyming dictionary and all round weasel-faced fucknuts.

Ah DFS - purveyors of cheap sofas, makers of butt clenchingly terrible adverts (I’m still hunting for that Subterranean Homesick Blues ad), former employer of Linda Barker.

What were the chances of these two atrocities of the modern world colliding in one horrific televisual advertisment?

But wait, what’s this?

As you’re contemplating your bad luck for having watched an advert that’s made both your ears and your eyeballs bleed, just like buses - albeit buses being driven by the Grim Reaper on a Special Service to Hell - two of the bloody things turn up at once:

Advert 1

Advert 2

But, golly, I just can’t decide which is the gut-wrenching so I’ll open it up to you lot to decide. This poll will run for the next 2 weeks then it can go in the TWA archives for the rest of eternity.

Thanks to Jemma for submitting this bad ad.

Some of TWA’s less drunk readers might have spotted the new “Sponsored Video Content” section now dominating the North-East face of this blog.

As it’s a pretty big change to this blog I thought I’d better mention it rather than hoping you’d all think it was just another binge induced hallucination.

The euphemistically titled “Sponsored Video Content” - or less euphemistically titled “Video Adverts” - section is going to be there for the next month on a trial basis.

Although I’ve been trying to ruin TV’s Worst Adverts slowly with increasingly sloppy and decreasingly funny posts, I’m keen to hear your thoughts on the “Sponsored Video Content” and how you feel it affects this blog.

If you hate (and it magically pays off my mortgage) during this trial period I’ll get rid of it for something more pleasing to my erudite readers’ eyes.

Cheers, Silky.

This is the first in a new series of adverts called “Scorn in the ASA” - adverts that have been banned by the ASA (only the one’s that I can find on YouTube though).

Give yourself a minute to recover from the hilarity of the series name before watching the first of the banned adverts:

The Bingo Association (that’s right I said “Bingo Association”) objected to this National Lottery advert because it was “misleading and denigratory” and because the advert implied that “bingo clubs generally were closed and that bingo clubs were a ‘dying’ industry”.

It didn’t complain however that advert also implied that bingo is played by scrubby old cripple women who clearly have absolutely no taste whatsoever.

I’ll never understand some people, I really wont.

Lynx?

On TV’s Worst Adverts?

Surely some mistake?

I’ll let Andy, who submitted this bad ad, explain:

It’s just horrific, isn’t it?

Is it? You tell me dear reader, you tell me (you know by voting and leaving comments and shit).

As a parent you always try to do the best by your children:

• You make sure they’ve got shoes on their feet.
• You make sure they know the facts of life.
• You make sure they don’t date flora.

The mother in the new Oasis advert appears to have failed her daughter on all three of these points.

Because not only is the poor (and seemingly only 14 years old) girl up the duff, she’s in that state thanks to a man who’s half cactus. And what’s more, she seems to have burnt the soles of her feet during the whole “having sex with a man who looks like he has a very prickly penis” affair.

She does look to have recovered from the coitus fairly well though because one would imagine that ramming a cactus up your vagina and having sun burnt feet would make you walk like John Wayne giving Fern Britton a piggy-back.

Spare a thought for the old Cactus Kid though, will you?

He can’t have had much luck with the ladies growing up covered in spines. Finally finding a consenting partner (lets not even go down the possible cactus man on under-age girl rape route) must have been like all his Christmases coming at once.

Although I can think of one positive of being a cactus man - no post coital snuggling. As the women hobbles off to casualty, you just roll over and drift happily off to sleep.

What bliss.

But just as the mother in this advert has failed her daughter so it seems the ad-makers have failed their botany exams.

For the only explanation (that come within a couple of thousand light years of being logical) for the Cactus Kid to actually be half cactus is to tie in with the tag line “For people who don’t like water”. Except cactuses don’t don’t like water, it’s just they can grow in a dry environment. It’s clearly not the same thing.

God, I bet they feel foolish now I’ve pointed out that flaw in their lunacy.

Anyway while you wait for the final part of this series in which the pain of child birth is compounded by the fact the baby is covered in prickles, here’s the madness of the first part to enjoy:

There is, so they say, a fine line between genius and madness.

This is obviously a load of old bollocks.

Don’t believe me?

Well, you have to look no further to see just how vast the chasm is that separates these two noggin states, then these two songs: Eleanor Rigby and The Frog Chorus.

Yes, poor old former genius, Paul McCartney went a little bit mad in the 80’s and has seemingly been on a slippery downward slope ever since.

But that hasn’t stopped us from loving the old duffer - even as he stumbles from one disappointing musical release to another embarrassing court appearance - even as his face slowly turns into that of Droopy.

And this is the face that the British Paralympic Fund have chosen to front their fund raising campaign - promoting their athletes as “super heroes”.

Which makes Sir Paul seem like an odd choice.

You see, Paul McCartney’s recent track record when it comes to judging the characters of disabled people has been, let’s be honest, poor at best.

The last disabled women who he thought was “pretty amazing” turned out to be a screeching, one-legged, former porn-star, crack-pot who cost him £24 million to get rid of.

Good one, Paul.

So when you ask him to front your campaign praising the high quality characters of some disabled women (OK and men), it’s a little like asking the Captain of the Titanic to endorse your brand of binoculars.

Sir Paul tells us that for just £3 a month we can help the Paralympic team’s pursuit of gold medals at the London 2012 games. This, coincidentally, is how Paul McCartney is paying his divorce settlement - in monthly £3 payments.

He’s only got 7,999,984 more payments to make and he will finally be free of Geordie maniac. Aren’t direct debits brilliant?

Anyway, when it comes to advice, if Sir Paul offers to give you some song-writing tips, get your pen and paper out. If he offers to find you a wife, run a mile.

And if you can do that in under 4 minutes, he might be able to get you some funding too.

I’m going to have to describe this advert in the style of a recipe on Gordon Ramsay’s F Word because I’m far too drunk at this very moment in time to type meaningful sentences:

Girl. Dress.

Tights. Rip.

Vomit. Hair.

Make-up. Smear.

Coat. Marinate.

Skirt. Wet.

Done.

Yes, this is another laughable effort by the Government trying to make us change our attitude towards alcohol.

“You wouldn’t start a night like this” the advert states.

No, you’re right, we wouldn’t.

That’s because nobody, and I mean nobody, goes out with the intention of getting vomit in their hair.

Not a soul.

“So why end it that way?”

Well, it’s a good question and I’m glad you’ve asked it.

One of the main reasons people go out and get so unbelievably drunk and do all the things you show in your advert is that the system has made their lives seem so completely meaningless that the only way they can forget the horrors of the world metaphorically puking in their hair is by drinking too many Smirnoff Ices, falling into the gutter whilst singing the hits of Girls Aloud and then actually puking in their own hair.

That’s one of the reasons. I agree with you, there are more, but that’s one of them.

So maybe if you helped construct more meaning in people’s lives rather than telling them not to “get a wet bottom” you might have a bit more luck reducing the levels of alcohol abuse in the UK.

Until then probably best to stop being so fucking patronising.

Fools.