Fairy Bubbles Can: TSW adverts and continuity, December 28th 1991

Dumbo ends and after the omnipresent "TSW presentation" slide we're given an advert for Lemsip, a very good friend of mine just at the minute - the hot lemony drink that keeps you from suffocating on your own mucus in your sleep. This is for a night-nurse styled variant (labelled a "relief liquid", which might be why it looks like urine) illustrated by a guy floating off to sea in his sleep. Possibly he's using the Lemsip to commit suicide. Merry Christmas.

Next, narrated by one of those omnipresent advertising voices that no-one's heard from in 20 years, Cream Silk! These guys were always an also-ran in the overstuffed toiletries arena, which is why they had to invent their own obviously fake newsreader instead of using a real one. A sub-brand of a sub-brand of Lever Brothers at the time, these days the name's only used in the Philippines.

Then, Nanette's back, this time operating some kind of washing-up sweatshop disguised as a fancy dress contest. It also doubles as a demagogue for Fairy Liquid, demonstrating how many more dishes it can clean than those other, lesser, bastard liquids. I say "demonstrating", you'll be lucky if you learn anything solid. But that's what adverts are for.

Next, a slightly extended version of the Do It All advert depicting how the Blokeman got lured into the nightmarish vortex of fast talking and low prices in the first place. After that, a dinner party for the National Union of Hand Models leads to humiliation for one manicured attendant because there was a dirty fork. Enn Reitel - his voice was on every third advert between 1990 and 1998 or so - is on hand, ho ho, to explain how this could have been prevented. Good thing they didn't tell her about the dirty knife.

Just to illustrate the point, Enn shows up again immediately afterwards. He's usually an actor, impressionist and comedian, with appearances on Whose Line is it Anyway? and Sptting Image and at least two ITV sitcoms of his very own, not to mention doing his Peter Lorre for Tim Burton's Corpse Bride - and almost playing Del Boy - but it's this sort of thing he's arguably most famous for, to the point when it's actually oddly jarring to see him actually acting in things. This time, what he's saying seems to be exciting some kind of terrifying multicoloured slug-like beast, to the extent that it pulls itself painfully up on what I can only assume are its haunches and flies away in delight. Pickfords Travel didn't survive the 1990s. In fact, it didn't survive another two years, being absorbed by Going Places in 1993, which in itself was eaten by Thomas Cook a few years ago.

NOW: PRINGLES POTATO CHIPS. The David Seaman-endorsed crisp-in-a-tube finally makes it to the UK, heralded by this bloody annoying advert based around the sound it makes when you prise off the lid. It reminds me disturbingly of the rapping dog from the shit animated Titanic movie (the one which was merely incompetent and insensitive, rather than being actively sickening and insulting), particularly the repeated shot of a young generically ethnic girl eating a Pringle and reacting with delight. Both her and the ponce in the yellow leotard who closely resembles the late Michael Sundin were cheated - they only had to eat one crisp and they just trebled it up on the recording. The copy's faintly terrifying: "You taste 'em! You want 'em! You love 'em!" They might as well just say "Consume! Reproduce! Obey!"

Finally, Enn Reitel AGAIN shows up on a Domestos advert. This is a condensed version of a full-length one, of course, and out of context, that last shot doesn't make a huge amount of sense. Those vaguely Don Bluth germs and their loathing of the product in question were the replacements for the Big Bad Dom campaign of the late 1980s, and were of course far less cool.

That's the last advert, but after that we've got a couple of minutes worth of Gus Honeybun, dressed as Father Christmas and for some reason menaced by a harmonica and bubbles. He's less manic than in the one I uploaded a while back with Sally Meen, and more notably, his magic button is working! Finally you can see what it did. His foil is Sixth Doctor lookalike David Fitzgerald, straight man for the entire region - despite his tendency to ramble like a man in a fever when presented with a stuffed rabbit to play against - and shockingly thin-looking here. He moved to Sky News for a bit after the demise of TSW, played a fat bloke for Launa windows, and can now be heard on Radio Devon, discussing food and the eating of it.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Continuity (broadcasting)
• Advertising
• Television
• Commercial
• commercial
• Television Advertisement
• Broadcasting
• Spot
• Commercials

[uhegbu]

'TSW Presentation'. It happened in the LWT region while watching overseas programmes and films like Baywatch and the James Bond movies.

[uhegbu]

Classic Pringles advert. The original one. I always wanted to try them and it is now my favourite form of snacks. I ate them at the Hackney Picturehouse on the 27th of December watching Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol starring Tom Cruise.

[feckingbillgates]

What does he mean by the bubbles melting that surface? Very odd.

[jx866]

Excellent, you used my joke. See how my comedy/observational talent can improve your video synopses? We'll discuss the terms of the scriptwriting contract later, but I assure you my rates are very competitive.

[jx866]

Make sure you mention that it says "relief liquid" on the side of the Lemsip bottle, which is funny because it's the colour of piss.

[TheGerkuman]

This video contains: a literal (and frightening in retrospect) metaphor for lemsip, a shampoo ad with music composed by a random number generator, kids washing up (an impossibility in this day and age), a fractionally longer yet very similar ad from Do It All, a party of hands overly worried about dirty cutlery, a eye-melting CGI lilo from Pickfords, the advent of Pringles (whose ad's havent changed at all) and some whiny germs.

Followed by Gus 'Mother-F-ing' Honeybun and his magical harmonica.

[feckingbillgates]

That bunny can't be arsed with those 9 hops, you can tell.

A 9 year old having a card read out on a programme like that. That's quite bad.