Game Now On: Central adverts, continuity and ITN News: December 1994

This goes in and out of sync. As you saw yesterday, the Christmas Day 1994 recording of Mary Poppins went on past the commercial break to the ident introducing the next show. And then it died. But after that, there's another commercial break, from a week or two earlier, that's only slightly less Christmassy. If you look carefully you can see the echo of a Central trailer for the thunderous televisual landmark that was GLADIATORS: THE CELEBRITY CHALLENGE on Christmas Eve.

This leads to a fairy-tale styled advert for Littlewoods Scratchcards, who now found themselves competing with the National Lottery, although those guys didn't have scratchcards for another year or so. They obliquely allude to the fact that Littlewoods being smaller means you're marginally more likely to win something. For some reason the voice delivering this good news is a lugubrious Yorkshireman who once played a miserable Northern horse for Webster's bitter.

Next, Mr. "You can't improve on a Mars but you can improve on ice-cream" lends his rich tones to an advert for the concept of Sherry, which was on the high road to EU protected status - making the long-standing slogan "Real Sherry Comes Only From Spain", as seen every time anyone so much as said the word "Sherry", a flat statement of fact. That stamp showed up on Sherry adverts long before it was made a European law, mind. I saw it on a Croft Original advert once. Lined the wines aisle of the Co-Op. In those periodic pamphlets we'd get from Norman's, it was there under every bottle that dared to claim to be full of sherry. Incidentally, those now come in green bottles with white labels and look roughly 30000% less classy than they did when Jeeves and Wooster were advertising it.

Then there's the Big Bag of Hell again, and Littlewoods make a comeback with Rocko and Socko. That's the last advert; Saturday Evening (for such it is) isn't plum advertising space. Next we get that Bill Murray double bill trailer again, because this was back in the days when Channel 4 and ITV were vaguely like siblings, with shows on the one occasionally being promoted on the other. It's completely unthinkable now, of course; but remember, ITV used to sell Channel 4's advertising for it. That had ended a year earlier, and the alliance slowly dissolved over the remaining years before Channel 4's circle-related overhaul. If you're very lucky, you might still see the odd Channel 4 trailer on ITV - during a commerical break.

Then there's a Central trailer for the underrated The Dead Pool, in which Clint Eastwood, who at 80 years old could still kill you with a napkin, menaces a berk in a ponytail, as he bloody well should, even if it is Liam Neeson.

Then, without an ident - because Central couldn't always be bothered - we go straight into the Early Evening News with the late Carol Barnes and that potato-faced guy on sport duties. His news is better than Carol Barnes', mind; he's got Stan Collymore - now a pundit, despite his preternaturally aggravating voice - defeating Man Utd, whereas the late Carol has the beginning of the first Chechen War. The end of Yeltsin's original deadline is described here from Grozny by a shockingly young Julian Manyon, still ITN's Mr War and master of the pull-back reveal, and from Moscow by Andrew Simmons, played by Reece Shearsmith in a false moustache. And then the recording really does end.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• advert
• commercial
• commercials
• Central
• ITV
• television
• ITN
• News
• Chechnya
• War
• ads
• advertising

[Nickyootoob]

17 years ago tonight and on a Saturday as well!