I have, of late, been enjoying the adverts on television rather more than the programmes. I watch the news peeping through my fingers, my mouth agape with shock and disbelief, whereas several of the adverts have me smiling.
I have become a devoted fan of some of the actors playing the roles in the little dramas that are meant to persuade me to spend money. In that objective, I’m afraid most of them fail, as I often can’t fathom out what product they are advertising. That girl in a flowing cloak running over the roof of a dangerous-looking building, for instance, or Tilda Swinton doing some beautiful contortions—I am never quite sure why. She makes me much too frightened to purchase whatever she is selling. I think it is perfume, but it doesn’t seem to make her very happy. Yet the advert is a work of art, and I enjoy watching it.
My favourite has made me chuckle over numerous viewings, but only yesterday did my daughter tell me that it was actually encouraging me to use eBay. The actor playing the lead gives a superlative, understated performance that would win her a Bafta in a comedy series. She and a young man are packing up their belongings, I assume in preparation for moving in together. The guy holds up terrible vases and ugly toasters, which the girl regards with restrained distaste, condemning them, I now realise, to be sold on eBay. Like the best television acting, it is all in her eyes, appalled, disbelieving, resolved, concluding with her staring malevolently at his pretty, fluffy dog. That tiny sequence tells a story of dawning incompatibility that would probably take four episodes in a drama. I do not know the two actors, but I hope that they are proud of their work. I’m sure it is not where they hoped their careers would go, but if you need to earn some money doing a commercial, it is best that people are not cringing with embarrassment while watching it.
For instance, one group of needy actors are paying their rent by happily dancing while harmonising a song about finding a cure for various unattractive stomach problems, ending with bending over and pointing at their bottoms as they sing gaily the word “diarrhoea”. Not exactly the Sondheim musical of their dreams. But they do it with professional gusto. As do the two women in another advert discussing their delight about their new incontinence knickers.
When ITV first started, a new career became possible for people in the industry: doing adverts. I had been appearing in tatty theatre for several years with an actor I lost touch with when I began to get small parts in television and in the West End. Out of the blue, I was invited by this actor to a party at his place. He had disappeared from the theatre scene, and I felt I must support him. I took a nice bottle of wine, which was rejected by the butler who opened the door of my friend’s luxurious Chelsea house. He was making a fortune recording numerous voice-overs—a great deal more than I was, slogging away at eight performances a week in the theatre.
I was engaged for one advert sometime in the 1950s. God knows how I got it, because I turned up for the filming in my customary attire, a shaggy Afghan coat and khaki combat trousers. The makeup and costume people blanched. They took some time to transform me into a sweet, caring housewife taking some healing Lucozade to my ailing son. I had to pause outside a door, smiling at the bottle of Lucozade on a tray, before bringing it to my son in bed—a singularly horrid child from the Italia Conti dance school. The stylists did their best with a summer frock and pinny—yes, in those days housewives wore pinafores—curled hair and a pretty pink lipstick. I did my best to smile at the bottle, open the door without dropping the tray and disguise my hatred of the child in the bed. In fact, all my friends said I didn’t succeed. The result, they suggested, was an advert that managed to suggest Lucozade was good for poisoning children.
Suffice it to say, I have never, in the 70 years I have spent in the profession, been offered any more adverts. I could many times have done with the money and would willingly have sold my soul to advertise some awful product. Or, I may have been lucky enough to be miscast in something like the 2025 Waitrose Christmas ad. It told the story of a delightful relationship developing between a not wildly handsome man and a very -beautiful woman. Keira Knightley and Joe Wilkinson gave delightful performances, and the focal subject of the advert took a backseat to an unusually touching little love story.
I’m sure the advert helped Waitrose to sell more food, and watching it’s tenderness did me a lot of good in these ugly times.
