>I'll leave it to someone else to start a 'Comedians' Rubbish Ads' thread.

There are far, far too many for me to bother.

Good ones, though:

Fry & Laurie's Alliance & Leicester campaigns (well, the first few anyway - Compact and Bijou, anyone?)

The Griff Rhys Jones Holsten Pils ads were good - got run to death, but they were clever.

erm....oh, is that the time? More later.

Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins for Cinzano.

And Jim Davidson was allowed to live.

Yeah but once they've done an ad they go shit.

>Yeah but once they've done an ad they go shit.

Fry & Laurie maintained the quality pretty much up to the end of the partnership - apart from (cough) Peter's Friends.

I am having trouble thinking of these, I must admit....

Oh no they didn't.

>Oh no they didn't.

Do you mean the last F&L series for the BBC? Hmmm, alright not brilliant, but I found it less enticing because of the insistence on special guests.

Mind you, first Alliance & Leicester ads came out in about 88, so you're suggesting that they went shit before their first full BBC2 series (early 89), or probably before Saturday Night Fry as well (88 Jon? Am I right?)

Peter's Friends, though. Where do we start?

Or shall we just not bother?

About 89 sounds right Justin.

I admired the minimalism of that ad Ben Elton did for some Fair Trade 3rd World chocolate bar, or whatever it was. Obviously he wasn't paid for it.

I don't mind the old Fair Trade lark myself Jon. The problem with someone like Fry was that he did too many ads.

Chris Morris should make some public information films.


After all, "jam" was weirdly reminiscent of the evil synths'n'distorted camerawork 'don't try to get frisbees back from substations' one...

Victor Lewis Smith did a series of classic radio ads for Midland Bank in the late 80s...
(and Fry and Laurie are still cool! 'Up to '89'. I ask you...)

When frizbee be lodged in electric tree

Then welcome!

oohhh...

(alwaystellyourmummy) welcome...

in Blue Jam.

...when step you out between parked cars, only to recoil as blurry brrrrm-brrrrrms petrol on by, and here comes a lycra man to tell you what you did wrong...

Chris Morris: "So, we've established the need to protect and survive, but which is more important?"
Old Man: "Well, er..."
CM: (interrupting)"I mean, which would you do first? You're right at the very end of Nuclear Autumn at you've gotta make a decision quick or you and your are freakifried"
OM: "Well, erm, you've got to survive so you can protect, but you won't survive if you, er..."

"Paul Garner's on the phone, OK Paul, where are you?"

"I'm outside a hotel"

"Is it expensive?"

"Yeah, classy"

"OK Paul, I want you to go inside, and shout in a loud voice 'they've put the welcome mats down on newly polished floors'..."

When lock you dog in hot car, and return to find hairy skeleton and sweat bark death park...

Made around the time of The Day Today, the ad featured David Schneider as a hapless backpacker who was abducted by aliens who showed him their amazing technological advances in the field of washing machines. (Someone gets paid for making this shit up, by the way. *And* all they spend it on is weapons-grade cocaine. Fuckers.)

Anyway, the idea was that Schneider was being interviewed about his experience. The interviewer didn't have to say much, and in the few moments when he was (only just) in shot, he was tantalizingly unglimpsable. But he didn't half sound like Chris Morris... Anyone else remember this? Can anyone clear up whether it was him?

I remember the ad, I don't remember CM being in it, though I wouldn't have recognised him then anyway.

>Yeah but once they've done an ad they go shit.

Adrian Edmonson did ads prior to and while he was in the Young Ones. Lenny Henry did ads long before people started slagging him off for doing so (i.e. before everybody decided he was famous enough to sell out). Who remembers Stephen Fry doing an ad for Extra Strong Mints (as Philias Fogg in a hot air balloon) back when he was a complete nobod. - didn't even have a line as I recall.

Ben Moor has done a wide stack of ads playing on his amusing skinny nerd image yet I can never envisage a time when the man will turn crap. He's too damned fantastic. He has totally the right attitude.

Paul Putner - loads of ads under his belt but a shit-kicking comedy actor who is probably down to earth enough to juggle being great and the acceptable face of Tizer.

Then you have Marcus Brigstocke and Julian Barratt who are rubbish anyway.

Rik Mayall used to be bolshy about ads: 'I've been offered half a million to advertise and I turned it down�on the other hand, I may be lying'. But doing ads didn't turn him crap. Lazy audience expectations re: his comedy saw to that.

Weren't Lee and Herring offered an ad for British Rail or something, way back during FOF series 1? I think they wanted Eldon to do a Simon Quinlank trainspotter thing. I actually reckon they should have taken it - it could have acted as good publicity for the show.

Cue everybody - 'Oh, so now you're saying PR is a good thing? You've changed your fucking tune, etc...'

>Rik Mayall used to be bolshy about ads: 'I've been offered half a million to advertise and I turned it down�on the other hand, I may be lying'. But doing ads didn't turn him crap. Lazy audience expectations re: his comedy saw to that.

Remember a pre-fame Mayall in the '5-4-3-2-1' chocolate bar ads? On screen for all of, well, slightly more than 5 seconds, obviously*. He's the astronaut watching the countdown in his capsule, who then tries to take a bite from his '5-4-3-2-1'. Tragically, he's forgotten that his visor's down! Doh!

(* Actually, this is rubbish, isn't it? Manfred Mann speed through the numbers much quicker than a second apart...)