Q. What's the difference between a mirror in a blind man's home and The Advertising Standards Authority?
A. One is a complete and utter waste of fucking space and the other is a mirror in a blind man's home!
I almost crashed my car this morning (yes, I sponged petrol money off a chum) when I heard on the radio news that attempts to resurrect the famous old "Go To Work On An Egg" advertising slogan had been scuppered by the ASA.
The agency, apparently, had ruled that an egg-a-day at breakfast time was not healthy because it did not consitute a balanced diet. Fucking Hell!!!!! Give me a break, please. These twats have obviously been got at by those heroes of mine, the health Nazis.
I recall the advert from my flukey youth and I don't remember the slogan - dreamt up, some claim, by one of Fay Weldon's former underlings - being "Go To Work On An Egg.....But Don't, Whatever You Do, Have Anything Else, Like Some Cereal, Or A Cup Of Tea, Or Bacon, Or Some Orange Juice Because That Will Really Fuck Things Up And You'll Never Get To Work Because You'll Die From Malnutrition". Wouldn't have had the same ring to it, somehow. No, I don't think anyone ever fucking suggested that eating nothing but eggs for the rest of your life was the way forward. I think the point was that fresh eggs, when they're not battery-produced timebombs dripping with salmonella, are kinda good for you. They contain lots of protein and you need that - especially the veggies of this world.
I had scarcely stopped chewing my foot over this lunacy 12 hours later when I was watching the Devil's Lantern and on came an advert for the breakfast cereal Shreddies.
These I also remember from my childhood and I have to say I quite liked them. The trouble is they are packed with sugar and salt and all sorts of other bits of shite but does the ASA step in to say they can't be advertised? Does it testicles! Does it say they can only be eaten as part of a balanced diet? No!
Worse than that, this advert claimed that Shreddies were not actually mass-produced in some fucking mouse and rat-infested factory griefhole by BO-ridden, nose-picking Aids victims with bloody and gaping wounds but by...............wait for this................a handful of grannies who KNIT them in some chintzy front parlour somewhere!!! Where were the boys and girls at the bastard Advertising Standards Authority when that baby was first aired?
So, to recap, in the world of this country's advertising regulators, suggesting that people would do well to have an egg in the morning is inaccurate and potentially harmful but urging them to wolf down sugar and additive-saturated squares of mass-produced shite could not prove harmful in any way and, furthermore, telling them that they are "knitted by nanas" in their homes is not inaccurate.
I think I'm getting one of my headaches again. Sorry, the organisational afterbirth which is The Advertising Standards Authority can go to Grantham.
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5 comments:
I know that I am as one crying out in the wilderness on this one, Reg, my old kumquat, but you do need to regulate your anger by a more gentle life style. As a vegetarian who does not eat eggs, and being at least 3 times the weight of you, I think I am in a position to point out the fallacy of your argument that just because I don't go round biting chunks out of peoples' legs, there must be some deficiency in my diet.
Now, off you go to the kitchen and ask, politely, that nice Mrs P to make you a bowl of organic porridge. If you are a good boy and control your temper for 5 minutes, she may even put a sultana in it. Make sure it is made with soya milk, and has no salt or sugar.
Dearest Vicus,
You have worried me deeply, chum-of-mine. If YOU are three times the size of ME then you must have a specific mass approaching that of a Black Hole!
As to your merciless and relentless campaign to stop me eating cows and to get me on the bus to Lentilsville, may I quote that great orator and thoroughly reasonable and articulate gentleman, The Rev Ian Paisley......."Never, never, never!!!"
Hurray! Something gets sent to Grantham - my day can begin.
This brings back one of those childhood half-memories: a health visitor was at our house when I was very small and she criticized my mother for giving me and my sister two boiled eggs each for tea - "One is sufficient."
I can see my mom shaking (with fury, I hope). I think she swore a lot and banged things in the
kitchen when the naz...woman left.
Goodness knows why the woman was there....perhaps us being working class was "sufficient".
I continued to receive two boiled eggs. And soldiers.
Saltless porridge? O. M. G.
Hi Arabella,
Your mum should have told the health visitor: "I only give the girls two eggs on the days you call round. That's because the girls then have one egg each and I shove this egg (muffled, straining expletive) HERE and the other egg (more muffled grunting) HERE!!! Sorry, did that hurt?
P.S. Soldiers - the toasted/breaded sort - dipped in a good eggy are, without doubt, one of the finest gastronomic experiences it is possible to have! My bro and I were likewise indulged as kids.
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