Picture This...

There’s an advert running on the commercial TV channels in the UK at the moment for a loans company called Picture. The scenario goes a little like this: average-looking wholesome Dad has got himself into a spot of bother financially (too many nights down at the dogs, and then a visit to the local lap-dancing club) and wants to consolidate his finances.

Boisterous, rosy-cheeked children interrupt him at various intervals during the commercial, and there’s a beautifully kept show-home in the background. He ends up quite matey with the customer service advisor by the end of the advert, and I think they may be organising a mutual appreciation society or something.

But do you know what is weird about this whole thing, apart from the obvious in that he doesn’t crack his kids around the ear for rudely nagging him when he is on the phone?

His wife is seen videoing him right the way through it!


This would have alarm bells going off in my head if I were he. For what purpose, other than evidence, would she be filming her husband applying for a massive loan? In the not too distant future, he is going to find a hefty manila envelope on his doormat containing an application for divorce citing unreasonable behaviour including meditated bankruptcy and infidelity with Juicy Lucy at Dirty Harry’s Strip Joint. Instead of chatting up the loan shark, I’d be chatting up a decent lawyer.

This excruciating advert must run for well over a minute and it is so cheesy it makes Stilton look like fromage frais (which everybody knows is just slightly off yoghurt pretending to be cheese).

I’d want to divorce that bloke if I was married to him – not only because he is a toothy, happy-chappy who probably knows how to bake a soufflé, changed the kids’ nappies AND is in touch with his feminine side – but also because he is so incredibly unfunny. He cracks jokes to his new pal on the other end of the phone, who is obviously ROFLing at him sycophantically, and they are as humorous as an infestation of ringworm on your face.

I’m not too sure about the rest of the UK’s female population, but I couldn’t bear to be shackled to a bloke who is more gurlie than me, and who has such a banal sense of humour. I’d always be checking my wardrobe to see if any of my clothes had been tampered with, living with him.


It is quite ironic that in another advert released by Picture, the wholesome Dad is constantly agitating a rugby ball while wearing a rugby shirt, which has obviously been bought from Man at Oxfam as I have never seen it on Rugby Special in all of my born days. Is this a case of ‘methinks he doth protest too much’? I won’t go into any ball-handling innuendoes, as that is too predictable and tedious, but you probably get where I am coming from.

The ultimate insult in this advert is the background music. For anybody over the age of 30, we all remember it as Tony Hart’s Gallery Music, which is actually called ‘Leftbank 2’ by the Lance Gambit Trio.

This is such an evocative piece of music for us 30-somethings that it could, in severe cases, whilst enduring this tripe, instil indignation and high dudgeon in those of us who used to sit with bated breath to see if our picture of ‘Ralph Our Dog’ got into Tony’s gallery this week, hoping we’d won a Take Hart Art Kit.


So, not only am I subjected to utter tosh when the actual programmes are on telly, the adverts are equally as mind-numbing now. Yes, I know, I have the ‘Off Button’, but considering I was extorted into purchasing a TV license even before I had an aerial installed in my new home, I feel I have the right to watch it and complain bitterly.

Complaining is what put the Great into Great Britain.