What better way to start the week than with the übersexy Hattie Jacques? This advert is from 1980 and would be one of the last things she recorded before she died, stupidly young at 58, in October of that year.
The advert is for Asda Superstores and, whilst everything else in the entire world has changed in the intervening 31 years, it’s really odd but comforting to find that Asda is still using a version of the same music in its ads even now. Some jingle-writer is living on their own island in the Caribbean from the PRS fees alone.
Also present is Asda’s “price punch”, already by 1980 becoming divorced from its original meaning — it was women patting their front pockets and making the change rattle; you know, because they got a lot more change from an Asda shop and had collectively forgotten their purses. Here it’s already turning into the tap-tap, bleep-bleep, pat-pat meaninglessness of the current adverts. The worse thing about the price punch thing is how they’ve incorporated it into their “team cheer” (no, really) that they even make suppliers bloody do at meetings. When I sold toys for Tiger Electronics, they were one of my customers and I had to go there for briefings; they’d make us all stand up and do this ridiculous team cheer: give me an A! “A!” Give me an S! “S!” Give me a D! “D!” Give me another A! “A!” Whose the king? “The customer!” Do the price punch! Etc! I tended to stand there thinking, I’m sorry, I’m British and don’t do this sort of thing.
Still, never mind Asda and its Walmartian nonsense. Let’s sit back and just gaze at Hattie’s lovely, smiley face and cheeky glances. This week’s getting better already!
Another damn blog 