The absolute very first time I saw some adverts in the 70s and 80s was the moment I realised that my formulaic opener to every blog (and this is no.34 so I've had a good run) doesn’t work 100% of the time.
What I do remember is the first time I tried to record my favourite ads off the TV because it made a change from compiling mix tapes from the Radio One chart show on a Sunday evening. I was in my teens in the early 80s and I must have sat through 3 full afternoons of children’s telly (I was clearly a popular boy with loads of friends and a full social life) to capture the 30 seconds of magic which I could replay for weeks afterwards. This ought to make me an advertiser’s dream except I had no influence on my mum’s shopping habits other than forcing her to buy more packets of PG Tips than she strictly needed, not particularly because of the chimps on the ads but I really needed to complete my Tea Card collection and there were always a couple which those sneaky bastards at Brooke Bond kept to a low print run.
At the time, I made dozens of video tapes which, for some reason, I still keep tucked away in a cupboard despite no longer having a VCR machine to play them. They’re mostly recordings off TOTP or The Tube but also include a few adverts which are easy to find because each cassette comes with a folded sheet of paper where I have neatly written out every song, sports clip and advert on the tape. And, no, that’s not sad or OCD, that’s just sensible.
I think I recorded the ads mostly for the music (but I made an exception in the 90s with Tango – “yes, Ralph, the big orange fella gives him a good old slapping” – which was banned for inciting copycat behaviour in the playground although, when I was younger, we’d have been grateful to get a slap rather than the usual kicking). Here’s some on the list:
* Good Day by Nescafe - so niche I can’t even find a Youtube video of it but I remember the song ending with “this is a welcome change, Beryl” as the 2 old biddies do a knees-up (or have I made that up?).
* The Baggy Trousers rip-off for Colgate Blue Minty Gel (“mum and dad use it as well”). Talking of toothpaste, I also recorded the scene from Grease at Frenchie’s house where Jan mimics the Beaver on the 50s ad (“brusha, brusha, brusha, get the new Ipana”) – the lyrics to which have stirred up heated debate on the internet……and when I say heated, I’m talking “I thought it was brush-up?”, “no it’s brusha”, “oh ok”.
* Cadburys Flake – because I liked the chill-out vibe of the song (“only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate”) and nothing to do with the hardcore sexual symbolism with the chocolate blow job and the overflowing bath (I was in my early teens, sexually frustrated and too young to rent out adult movies from Steve the Goth at our local video store - although he did let me have a couple of under-the-counter copies later on and I realised I preferred the Flake ads)
*I also recorded a couple of Pepsi ads so I could learn the words to LipsmackinthirstquenchinacetastinmotivatingoodbuzzincooltalkinhighwalkinfastlivinevergivincoolfizzinPepsi and impress the girls in the Wimpy after school. I was hopeless at it and I blame this failure for me not losing my virginity any earlier than I eventually managed and, no, there won’t be an ‘Absolute Very First Time…’ account of that particular episode of my life, mainly because I need to fill up 2 sides of A4 for this blog and…well, you can guess the rest.
Looking back at these and other 70s/80s adverts, it’s striking how different they are to the ones on air today. For a start, there used to be a stark absence of mixed-race couples on telly which may well have reflected British society back then but, judging by our current ads, things have changed pretty dramatically since (I don’t get out much anymore). In those days, if the OXO Dad had come home to find a couple of mixed-race children of his around the supper table, Lynda Bellingham’s gravy wouldn’t exactly be the first thing he’d be discussing with her.
Another noticeable difference is that there used to be far less car commercials and far more for coffee and cigars. The Hamlet ads were based on the premise that calamity could be ameliorated by a puff on a cigar and a few chords of Bach. That said, I’ve just re-watched one where a peeping Tom runs out of coins to feed the seaside telescope he’s using to spy on a girl in a bikini. Most decent blokes could feel an affinity with some poor geezer struggling to take passport pictures in a photo booth (click here) but a frustrated stalker???!! Even the 'dum...dum...dum...dum' of ‘Air on the G String’ can’t make that into a calamity.
As for coffee, we either had Gareth Hunt with his slightly unsettling coffee bean fist shake and constant stream of new girlfriends or we got the story of the Gold Blend couple which followed the slow-burn relationship between the woman who ended up marrying Shoestring and the bloke off Buffy the Vampire Slayer. How on earth did that end well?
Here are some others which I wasn’t sad enough to record on my VCR but secretly wished I had:
* Hai Karate after shave – ‘one whiff drives women wild’ (and, if you weren’t interested in driving women wild you took ‘Enry Cooper’s advice and slapped on some Brut instead)
* The Milk Tray Man (“All Because the Lady Loves…”) which is what your mates called you if you ever went out to a party dressed in black (and here’s where you’ve got to feel for Steve the Goth from the video shop)
* Cadbury Smash Martians – as I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog, Smash came from the home of chocolate but was powdered potato. Someone in Bourneville was clearly having a laugh
* Reggie Perrin pouring Cinzano over Joan Collins and Campari-drinker Lorraine Chase being wafted here from paradi Luton Airport
* That dear old boy, JR Hartley, and the search for his Fly Fishing book with Yellow Pages (if he'd had access to Google, he'd have found it way before he even got to collect his pension)
* “A second class return to Dottingham” with Tunes and mum packing off her college son for his exams with Vicks Sinex (“course you can, Malcolm”)
As kids, we were putty in the hands of the advertisers. We flocked to the shops to buy strawberry or blackcurrant Chewitts once we realised they were even chewier than Barrow-in-Furness bus depot (although even this wasn’t enough to make us eat the banana ones). They made us want just one Cornetto, even if we had to nick it off someone else, and they tried to scare us into drinking milk by warning us of an alarming infestation of something called a 'Humphrey'.
Sadly for advertisers these days, there’s almost certainly something ‘problematic’ about every single one of these ads which means there's no chance of them being aired today except on social media for the liberal elite to point out how neanderthal we once were. But what those advertisers wouldn’t give for a golden era when people actually watched and talked about their adverts in the pub & playground instead of zipping through them on Catch-Up or skipping them on Youtube. Cue the sound of a lit match in the offices of the ad agencies before Air on the G String fills the room.
Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...SHOPS WHOSE DOORS HAVE CLOSED
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