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It's been a tough week.  I'm exhausted and can't for the life of me remember what that brilliant post I was going to write for today was going to be about.  So, until normal service can be resumed, here are some TV commercials from my childhood, taken from an ITV franchise that no longer exists (the once mighty Thames TV lost the London franchise to Carlton TV back in the nineties).  There are some classics here, including one of the Brentford Nylons adverts with a voiceover from Alan 'Fluff ' Freeman.  They also had longer ads in which Freeman appeared on screen, plying those wonderful nylon products.  WAs it any wonder that there was so much static electricity around in the seventies?  (It seems a much rarer phenomena nowadays, when we don't wear and sleep in 100% nylon products). 

The Harp Lager advert is another classic (is Harp even brewed any more, I remember seeing it on sale in Ireland in the nineties, but can't recall the last time I saw it in the UK).  Back in the seventies it was advertised on TV relentlessly, along with other seventies beers like Watneys Red Barrel and Double Diamond.  They were universally disgusting.  Later, of course, Harp adopted the slogan 'Stays sharp to the bottom of the glass'.  Not as catchy as 'If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club'.  Now, Club biscuits are definitely still on sale, but in a much restricted range of flavours.  Then there's the Daily Mirror with a tie in for the John Wayne film Brannigan, which was largely shot in London.  Clearly it was a big release in 1975 but wasn't a particularly good film.  The Duke was pushing seventy and looking decidedly unwell in it.  As a matter of interest, I did part of my PGCE course with a guy who, as a child, had met John Wayne when he was shooting Brannigan in London.  He said he came over as a pretty nice guy.

Finally, that advert for Smith's Twisters - this marked the point at which crisp manufacturers decided that traditional crisps just weren't enough and started coming up with all sorts of weird shit.  What were they thinking?  Traditional crisps remain the superior savoury snack.  Especially with beer.  I mean, could you imagine yourself eating Twisters as an accompaniment to a pint of Speckled Hen or Tanglefoot?   Exactly.