It's the way they tell 'em!

I have, willy-nilly, become something of an expert on radio commercials.  This has come about because of my shameful addiction to 'TOOOORKSPOOOORT'.  I write 'shameful' because, of course, 99.8% of their output is dedicated to 'footie' and it is a well known fact that only the brain-dead, or at least, the brain-less, are interested in 'footie', a game financed by morons, played by morons and followed by morons.  Of course, that doesn't apply to me because I only take an interest from a detached, not to say, lofty, position of intellectual neutrality occasioned by my scientific and social curiosity - and also, as it happens, the fact that all Liverpool fans are rubbish like their club, that Arsenal are a bunch of effete 'Frenchie-poohs' and Chelsea are simply the overseas branch of the KGB.  The only noble and decent fans are to be found at Molineux supporting the greatest team England ever produced - Come on The Wolves!  Ooops, sorry about that, let me just wipe the spittle off the screen - now, where was I?  Ah yes . . .

It is just too tiresome to keep switching off the ads whilst listening to the radio and anyway I usually have it on whilst I am doing something else.  Thus I have become a bit of a critic.  Being a former member of that splendid band of brothers, the second-hand car trade, I do listen to the car ads and think to myself what a complete waste of time and money they are.  Some actor comes on and rattles off the advantages of this car or another but is then forced, at the end of the ad, to have his voice speeded up in order to list all the caveats and exclusion clauses lest the manufacturer is hit by legal proceedings.  Consequently, I doubt that many people take any of it in.

Honda, however, are the exception.  They have hired Garrison Keillor, the author of the Lake Wobegon books, but even better, the superlative reader of those books. His morning recitals from his stories delivered in that slow, rich, baritone voice of his were a radio delight.  The Honda ad agency have written an excellent script for him  which allows him to slow down the delivery and savour every phrase.  It is the exact opposite of a fast, hard sell and the result is that you listen.

I have also been amused to hear ads for TV sports channels using ordinary language but arranged in rhyming couplets.  Again, some clever chap in the copy writing department of the ad agency recognised what Shakespeare and his contemporaries knew 400 years ago, that there is an instinctive attraction to rhythmic verse that makes you pause and listen.  And whilst I am on the subject of advertising, their industry's equivalent of the 'Oscar' must go to the chaps who created the 'Spec-Savers' ad.  To succeed in getting your punchline into mainstream English is what every ad man, and his customer, must dream of.  I put it up there with "We try harder" and the old Hamlet cigar ads.

Anyway, as I was saying, I'm no 'footie' fanatic, far from it, but 'Arry and 'is boys were dead lucky last night because when they play the return  . . . (Led off by his nurse before he starts playing his vuvuzela!)

Comments

[dearieme]

Oi, Duffers, treasure trove. Get over there, quick.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/08/17/arts/music/savory-collection.html

[David Duff]

Well spotted, 'DM', and I rely on you and your eagle eyes to spot when they release the CDs at which point you will immediately inform me! You will receive your usual reward - in heaven!