Flaming Nora

I had a rant at the telly last night when I saw Suggs advertising fish fingers. Nothing wrong with fish fingers, I love 'em and I'm quite fond of Suggs too. But I ranted away when I saw him selling his soul to the adman. Why couldn't he have been advertising something trendy, Doc Marten shoes, Brylcreem - anything but fish fingers? And when I finished my rant my boyfriend said he couldn't understand what I was going on about... and that's when it hit me. I was ranting because seeing Suggs on TV doing an advert, for something as mundane as fish fingers, meant the end of era as I knew it. It reminded me I'm not the 17 year old Madness fan I was once. I'm grown up and so is Suggs. It took a while for the realisation of the rant to hit home but when it did, a lump welled up in my throat and I had a bit of a moment. If you haven't yet had your youth pulled to pieces by watching Suggs advertising fish fingers, it's online right here.

Does anyone remember the advert for Richard Shops? If, like me, the thought of it rings a bell way back in the depths of your mind, didn’t the song in the ad go something like this: Richard Shops are filled with all the pretty things Soft and lovely pretty things to wear Come now, pretty things, make the world a prettier place Come prettier, come buy your clothes at Richard Shops I hadn’t thought about Richard Shops in years, not until the new ad for Marks and Spencer aired the other week. You know the one I mean, it’s got Itchy Coo Park as the soundtrack, and a pre-pregnant Myleene Klass in her knickers as the USP. It’s also got Twiggy and a bunch of air-brushed lovelies floating around in pretty things to wear, sitting in a field having a picnic and generally being too girly for their own good. But I don’t want adverts for pretty things, floaty dresses, pointy shoes, floppy hats, things I’ll wear once and never put on again. I don’t want Myleene Klass’ knockers on my telly. What I’d ...

It’s with little joy that I read that the Cadbury flake girl is on her way back to telly ads. What’ll it be this time? Another dozy mare in a field of opium poppies, off her head with chocolate delight painting flowers in the rain, like the last flake girl did? Maybe she’ll hide her chocolate stash under the sofa in a tin box (Galaxy bar) or be too doped up on choc not to know whether her husband’s going down the pub with his mates or philandering with his floozy (Cadbury Hot Chocolate). She could always imprison herself in her bedroom to snack up alone behind a locked door (Galaxy again). What is it with advertising chocolate to women as a drug?. Choc-o-holics? There’s no such thing, except in the mind of the chocolate men, pushers of a bar of brown fat and cocoa to female sugar addicts. It all sounds a bit Willy Wonka to me.