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The Worst Adverts on TV at the moment, for me, include some that are new and some that have been around a while but are still on the box. This will be the first in an occasional series and, they’re not in any particular order because I hate them all equally and quickly reach for the mute button when they begin….
Oh, and whenever I’m renewing insurance I’ll check all of Go Compare, Compare the Market and Moneysupermarket and see which gives the best result, since there’s no guarantee that just one of these sites will give me the best deal.
1. Admiral Insurance – First Day
Adverts featuring singing are bad enough at the best of times, especially when they’re doing a cover version of a song where the cover is so hippy-drippy twee that it makes you want to pierce your eardrums with the sharpest kitchen knife you can find. However, with Admiral, they have a bizarre premise where a young woman is starting work for them, and breezes into the building on her first day, badly crooning “Oh what a beautiful morning” from the musical Oklahoma.
Somehow she already knows the name of the security guard, Derek, and how he takes his coffee, so she’s a stalker from the off. Then she casually lobs her (hopefully empty) coffee cup over the escalator, in the hope that it’ll go in the bin (which it does). Then carries on singing as she arrives in the office, even though on her first day she would’ve been greeted at the front door AND would’ve had to sign in and get a temporary pass until they’d been able to take a picture, later that day. Also, why would any company have a welcome party for a new recruit? Any company, these days, will be taking on a number of newbies on the same day, some of which won’t turn up anyway because they’ve had a better offer elsewhere.
And let’s not forget the fact that she also enters the building… in an Admiral hat. And with stripes on her jacket that indicate Commander. And, with her entrance, I was half expecting a nurse to come along at the end and take her back to the hospital from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
PS. It’s now been removed, so here’s another one.
2. Nationwide Building Society – the missing scarf
A man leaves a cherished scarf on the bus, which has been through the family for generations as well as, probably, in the dog basket from time to time, which is soon picked up by a Nationwide advisor who hijacks her company Twitter account to bleat about it. Like a lot of the pointless rubbish that trends on Twitter, it soon trends and is seen up by the family, leading to the advisor goes to their home to return it. As she walks in, they’re also greeting a newborn child, the first in a new generation of misplacing boneheads.
I’m waiting for the alternative version of the advert when she goes into the customer’s home to return the scarf, clearly not having phoned her boss to tell them she’s doing an unscheduled home visit. Then they chloroform her by surprise, stick her in the cellar and she spends the next 50 years chained to the wall, eating gruel.
Add to the background crooning of “I’ll Keep You Safe”… Well, they would if she’s in the cellar.
Or, all the occupants murder her and dispatch of the body. Work thought she’d just quit...
At most, she would’ve picked up the scarf and taken it back into the branch and, once identified, called the customer for them to come in and pick it up.
3. Virgin Media – Vivid 200Mbps
I love Chaka Khan‘s I Feel For You, but just as the party starts, why on earth would any DJ worth their salt leave PART-WAY through a song? And why does it require a 200Mbps connection to play one bloody MP3 track? And if “whole house is online”, who in their right mind would let all the guests of a party use their wifi signal??
4. Barclays – “mortgage – quicker”
No singing this time, thankfully, but instead, a woman struts across the screen telling you how using your savings can cut the length of your mortgage and save you interest – explaining it in exactly the same terms that EVERY offset mortgage has EVER WORKED!
Oh, and we see her sentence repeated endlessly, but cut down in size each time it’s shown, thus getting across the way an offset mortgage works. Add to the fact that the tone is intensely cocky and it’s insulting to your intelligence beyond belief.
5. Just Eat – Chicken Madras
Cover version catastrophe in the extreme. Originally, it was a dreadfully unfunny version of Bonnie Tyler‘s Holding Out For A Hero, sabotaged to discuss the requirement for a Balti, while now we have to suffer the ruining of Groove Armada‘s I See You Baby, the next words being “Shakin’ that ass”, but you can’t say ‘ass’ on daytime television, and hence the woman in the ad is demanding a Chicken Madras. Laugh, I never started.
And I don’t tap any app to order a takeaway in advance – I phone them up. Why? To make sure they’ve got my order. I don’t want to starve.
6. Travelodge – Travelodgical
Another singing advert. There’s twee music, singing, puppets, another puppet, more singing! Are they in a Travelodge? Are they in an office? Neither, possibly, as they appear to be in a bad set where everything swings in and out of camera on cue.
And, blimey, what a punishment – forced to spend a night in a Travelodge! They might add insult to injury by making her watch that godawful advert, too!
Go to page 2 for more annoying adverts and more.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.