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7. Oak Furniture Land – “No veneer in ‘ere”
In the background, there’s a bastardised instrumental version of “Knock on Wood” playing… because they only sell wooden products. Do you see?
Alas, their actors are also as wooden, as one chirpily states – because they only sell real wood products and nothing fake, “No veneer in ‘ere!”
I want to decapitate him and leave it inside the drawer for a future customer to find…
Surprisingly, the Youtube channel name “OakFurnitureLand” was taken, so you they had to make do with “OakFurnitureLand1”.
Unsurprisingly, you see the words: “Comments are disabled for this video.”
8. Match.com – Teenage Dirtbag
It’s annoying enough when paid-for dating websites tell you “browse your matches for free”. Yeah, because if you want to contact anyone then it’ll cost you the best part of £50 to to do so. And who’s to say it won’t be full of timewasters like the free alternatives, such as Plenty of Fish? Perhaps if they offered a money-back guarantee…
But now it gets worse because there’s one doing the rounds featuring a cover of Wheatus‘s 2001 – yes, it’s that recent(!) – No.2 smash hit Teenage Dirtbag.
Funnily enough, they leave out the verse:
- “Her boyfriend’s a dick
And he brings a gun to school
And he’d simply kick
My ass if he knew the truth…”
The advert says ‘love your imperfections’. So, love the fact that she has a boyfriend and he brings a gun to school?
The advert appears to be removed from Youtube, now, so here’s the original.
9. Moneysupermarket – Big Bad Wolf
Moneysupermarket have made a few amusing ads in their time, but Big Bad Wolf makes you wonder how much cocaine the advertising company had been stuffing up their nose that day. There’s an inordinate amount of security surrounding a particular event, but never mind them because Gary looks like he’s had a seizure. And it’s contagious. I hope he gets some tramadol soon.
There’s also a radio version where, inexplicably, this features a man changing the words (as they’re ‘sung’) to “Big Bad Pussycat” and you hear a cat meow. WTF?!
10. Gladstone Brooks – PPI
“Have you been missold PPI?” AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!
Yes, there’s always at least one on the box at any given time, but when the nuclear bomb comes and wipes us all out, the only things that will survive are cockroaches, Beer microbes (mmmm… Beer), Lichen and Gladstone Brooks.
The well-dressed annoying man appears and tells us there’s a mountain of money that’s still unclaimed, and he thrusts one hand into the other to get the annoyance across. In a previous version, he used to then add, “Not interested?” but they dropped that because I kept shouting “NO, I AM NOT!!!” back at the TV.
He then continues to tell us why we should phone them up, but in any event, if you have a PPI issue, take it to the Financial Ombudsman. Yes, they take forever, but you’ll get more in the long run.
He also suggests you should call them “If you’re nervous, unsure, or simply don’t know”. Well, the latter two both have the same meaning, and I get nervous lots of times, but never around PPI.
And at the end of the advert, after the musical refrain, they sing “Glad-stone Brooks”. Make up your own swears to fit those three syllables.
11. Gala Bingo – Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye
Probably the worst singing advert out of all of those onscreen. Whichever version you have the misfortune to witness, there’s always someone killing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye”, which I best remember from the 1980s Bananarama cover version, but it’s been since 1969, first recorded by a fictitious band called Steam. One of these ads is set in a pub with a ridiculous amount of people in the stage all shouting along, replacing the first two words with “Ga-la-la-la” (Gala Bingo, do you see?) and the “Goodbye” with “Bingo”.
And most recently, there’s an even worse one. Any adverts featuring whispering or soft voices are like a knitting needle through the ear, so that’s how this latest one feels as a single woman softly trills said lyrics, while the whole room she’s in falls apart, supposedly filmed in one take but you can spot the joins with ease.
And since most gamblers LOSE money, how come everyone wins??
And, why 11 adverts? It’s one more annoyinger…
But it’s not just adverts I hate. Sometimes, there are intensely annoying TV sponsorship promos as well.
Bosch – Sunday Brunch
Bookending sections of Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, this one features various household appliances shout wisecracks at each other, often in wildly different and distinct accents, so they all jar with each other, and it enforces the fact that if you inject humour into any advert or promos – and if it’s not funny in the first place – then it grates immensely. These are among my most volume-off-able of promos.
Lloyds Pharmacy – The Chase
I’ve got hooked on this quiz show, but when Lloyds Pharmacy took over the sponsorship of the programme, they first created a series of promos in which an unshaven pharmacist repeatedly asked customers “How are you today?” with various inflexions upon the different words, while the customers stared back in gormless fashion. These were quickly replaced, after two weeks, with a lot less of him but with a handful of break bumpers where a male voiceover tries to be funny and often ends up supposedly irritating or confusing the viewers who are watching the programme – as if a camera is in their TV.
The most annoying of these is one with two women laughing so much they’ll need Tena pads to stop themselves from having wet underwear. God knows what they’re laughing about, but the voiceover tries to be funny, fails, and they both look at each other in confusion. The second worst features a woman with her new baby – Can anyone explain why, when the voiceover observes that she has “a little contestant in the making”, she looks back at him with a scornful visage as if he’s just taken a dump in her front room?
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.