Fun, If You Like That Sort Of Thing: Channel 4 Adverts, 1995?

More adverts yippee. These are from a showing of the second Peter Cushing Dalek movie from, I believe - and I'm sticking my neck out here - January 14th, 1995. It wasn't as good as the first because the original was a bleak, crushing slab of nihilistic horror - not that the first was a jolly adventure romp, but The Dalek Invasion of Earth was hard and cold even by Terry Nation's standards, and the adaptation to kiddie-friendly Amicus fare lost a lot in translation. Not bad, though.

Anyway, the adverts begin with a spot for the largely forgotten Vauxhall Tigra - or the Opel Tigra, to give it its original name, or the Chevrolet Tigra to give it its name in Latin America. This plays on the good old archetype of the "nerd" that was at the time all over the place - witness the contemporaneous grey Norm from the Twix ads, played by Stephen Taylor Woodrow and NOT the Actor Kevin Eldon, that was just something Lee and Herring used to say to annoy him. The three were later to all but detonate the archetype altogether with Simon Quinlank. The "Nerd" was the enemy of all fun in the Britpop era, a malformed creature to be shunned or destroyed. The best thing about this advert - except for the music ("Fiesta" by the Pogues as if you didn't know) - is the presence of a young Adrian Schiller, folding his jim-jams. No wonder his THINK! barman is so psychotic. He's emotionally repressed.

Next is that eerie Andrews Antacid advert with the tastefully industrial soundtrack and faintly scary blue man coming to life on the box to explicitly command you to buy the stuff in terms that seem just slightly wrong, somehow.

Next up is a load of old bollocks for the Philishave, shot in black and white with a soundtrack of meaningless swaggering prick-rock. Electric razor as both grooming aid and status symbol.

Then, a gaudy advert for the Sun newspaper from the "What does the Sun say?" campaign that somehow, for reasons that are hard to articulate, seems like it was dropped as a baby. Sun readers can win trips worth a tenner to one of several fun gulags, mostly in the North of England, where they will enjoy themselves so much they'll eventually fling themselves off diving boards into empty swimming pools to make it all stop.

Next: WORLD OF FISTS. One of those terrifying 90s adverts for headache medicine using macho metaphors to explain how Panadol Extra will beat the shit out of your headache. Although t's basically just paracetamol and caffeine.

Then, some kind of Salvador Dali dream sequence to represent Clark Kent having a stuffed-up nose. Halls help him escape the clutches of the waterlogged file cabinets and monstrous telephones.

Next, a nightmarish plastic abomination explains why you need a stairlift, because I do believe this was shown in the afternoon, the period of the day when housebound imprisoned oldsters are usually gawping at the television without really absorbing any of it in a desperate attempt to stave off the gnawing loneliness.

Then! Adorable cats! Because the Royal Mail is releasing some stamps with adorable cats on! Do they still bother advertising these?

Finally, Barclaycard, featuring nothing in particular. They've got a deal with Mastercard, here's their characters to clumsily explain it offscreen.

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[uhegbu]

I think this song in the opening Vauxhall advert is by The Pogues but what is the song I am referring to?

[Applemask]

@uhegbu "Fiesta"

[Sailorsega]

Is Kanuary like Smarch?

[Applemask]

@Sailorsega YES YES IT IS IT IS THE BEST MONTH OF THE YEAR

[96SmegHead]

One thing to note about the Barclaycard advert, it was the main influence for Johnny English because of Rowan Atkinson's Barclaycard character and his assistant Bough.

[jx866]

That break bumper is an odd one, it was a composite of some of the "faces" of Channel 4. It didn't last very long because it was a bit too uncanny valley.