Some Adverts I Have Issues With.

1. The Yellow Pages Adverts.

Well, it's mainly* just the one where while James Nesbitt is ringing up for car insurance on his 2-seater, his bird chips in and mentions the fact she's pregnant. After spending some time trying to fit a car seat in - and failing - he rings Yellow Pages back up and asks them for a quote on a people carrier.

Yeah, right. If he's so proud of his car as the advert makes out, surely he should have been ringing up and getting the number of a local abortionist?

(* That said, the one where his neice presses one button on his newly set-up PC and it magically comes on, connects to the internet and loads the Yellow Pages website instan-fucking-taneously also got right on my tits.)

2. Skittles - Taste The Rainbow.

This whole campaign is about taking LSD isn't it? Or am I missing something?

3. Picture Loans.

There's a bloke and his partner getting a loan off Picture. They own their own house and he's more bothered about what's happening with the weather than remembering how much the loan was supposed to be for. But the thing that bothers me isn't the acting or the forced dialogue.

No. It's the fact that she's videoing him. On the phone. To a loan company. I mean, why? How fucking sad would you have to be to video your own partner in your own house, while they're wearing clothes?

And, if you stopped buying shit like a video camera that you use exclusively for remembering what your partner looks like on the phone, then you wouldn't need the frigging loan in the first place.

4. Speed Limit Advert

The one where the kid starts coming back to life after being dead at the base of a tree. I actually like the rather graphic nature of the advert - especially the noise of her bones snapping back into place. The thing that gets me is the way the end of it sounds like a challenge:

"If you hit me at 30, there's an 80% chance I'll live."

Now them's good odds. So what you're saying is, if I happen to be going at 40mph when you step into the road, I don't actually have to stop or try to avoid you anymore? I just have to slow down to 30mph, plough straight into you and 4 times out of 5, the worst I can expect is a mild rebuke from the police? Brilliant! Cheers for that information.

5. Sky Scaremongering About Fake Sky Boxes.

I know that these are probably a scam, but that's not the reason I HATE these adverts. No. It's something about the very mentality of the adverts and how they choose where to show them that annoys me the most.

Firstly, if you hadn't seen the adverts, would you have known about the "fake box scam"? I would suggest you are unlikely to have heard anything about it. But now you ARE aware of the fact you can buy a box that might work and you don't have to pay Rupert Murdoch ANY MONEY WHATSOEVER, aren't you now just a bit more likely to hunt one down? I would suggest you are. Because there's nothing more enjoyable than depriving an Aussie billionaire of £50 a month, is there?

Secondly, even if you accept that Sky are right for warning people, would you think that having the advert on Sky's subscription channels was a good idea? Because if you've already got a real Sky box, then you're fairly unlikely to want a fake one. If you've got a fake one and can still see the adverts, then yours is working just fine and their advert is lying to you.

6. National Savings Bonds.

Sir Alan Sugar believes in them so much that he's donating his fee to Great Ormond Street Hospital. Which doesn't scan. In the same way that "I believe in the power of Cilit Bang so much, I'm chasing women with a cleaver" doesn't really work.

But anyway, that's not the problem. It's that he's giving money to a hospital by way of a charitable donation. Wasn't the idea of the NHS that hospitals would be funded centrally and didn't have to rely on charity? And, if people with as much money as Sir Alan Sugar were taxed effectively and at an appropriate (ie much higher) rate, the NHS could be funded properly.