Plymouth Entertainingly: Channel Four (TSW) adverts, 10th August 1991

We Are Not Alone. No, not about aliens - not in that sense, anyway - but an adaptation of James Hilton's followup novel to Goodbye, Mr Chips. Channel Four are showing it on Saturday August 10th 1991 because why not. Here is the first set of adverts from them, in my very own TSW region. See? We start with a tourism ad for Plymouth, voiced by David Fitzgerald himself. It has a reputation as a bit of a hole, and not exactly an undeserved one, but some parts of it are quite nice (although the cinematography and editing here is sweating blood on its behalf). The Barbican's kind of cute, for instance. Of course, this is when the city centre wasn't a wasteland of charity shops and We Buy Gold because all the companies worth a damn moved into the vast cavernous mall on the edge. Also that last claim is basically bollocks. You've basically seen enough after three hours, at the most. Also, damn it, Plymouth isn't a verb, what are you doing Fitz. And now, here's a naked lady to tell you about Alberto shampoos and hairsprays. Her delivery's remarkably wooden, but that's not really the point. In fact, she's not even naked, she's just bare-shouldered, all else is implication. So they might as well have hired someone who can deliver lines. Anyway, she twirls around coquettishly until you get dizzy while explaining that Alberto is the best because their products are colourless, which was having a design moment at the time as a semiotic shorthand for purity. Oh, look, it's Gerald Home, doing the Wile E. Coyote peeking-round-a-thing-too-thin-to-actually-hide-him thing as Our Man for Mr Muscle. Today he has a window cleaner and a bath cleaner that he can pretend is a laser gun, so as to relieve his days as a generic Mon Calamari in Return of the Jedi. It's a fact that 9 out of 10 people still aren't eating enough fibre, you dumb assholes, so for God's sake listen to Ian Holm and do as he says or we'll come round your house with a weed whacker. Specifically, he says to eat All-Bran, the cereal that is literally just sticks of bran. One bowl has all the fibre of nine slices of brown bread, which surely is actually more than one person could possibly need in a single day, but don't think about that. Or about shitting that mess out a few hours later. Coffee! It's that Nescafe post-Gareth Hunt's harem campaign where sitcom stars talk, rather confusingly, about advertising the coffee they're advertising right now. Just to make it more confusing, they're clearly performing in character from whichever sitcom they're doing, but referring to each other by their real names for legal reasons. This one's Michael Elphick and Angela Thorne from Three Up, Two Down. Heelacopter airplains. Some guy spots an unfeasibly hot lady pilot walking by, tries to pick her up, and she turns out to be a MILF all along because it's an advert for Oil of Ulay. As usual, there's emphasis on 𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚊𝚕 𝚏𝚕𝚞𝚒𝚍𝚜 and how the Ulay stuff works in the same way. Those cheekbones also help, though. And now: a day in the life of a lino floor. These things always have checkerboard pattens in adverts. Anyway, the poor thing gets battered with muddy dogs and cats and childrens and rubbish and probably toxic waste and all sorts of things. Fortunately our suburban couple take it in their stride, and even make a game of it out of sheer boredom. Presumably they don't have sex anymore as they've seen what it leads to. Anyway Flash inevitably beats No Name Bastard Brand and a lesson is presumably learned. Finally, a not-quite-famous-yet Paul Whitehouse finally makes it down the pub for a pint, only to be stymied by a massive crowd and the closing bell, two things which feel like they shouldn't go together, especially with the sun clearly still blazing outside. But since he was only after a pint of Foster's, nothing of value is lost. This is not a campaign I remember for the Aussie beer that Aussies have never heard of; presumably Paul Hogan was busy in Hollywood (though not for much longer) and they soon switched to the Mad Max "inspired" storyline.