Monday 9 November 2009

This isn't just bollocks..

It’s been seven years since those Marks and Spencer’s food adverts first appeared on the telly. You know the ones:

‘This isn’t just lentil soup; this is spicy lentil and Mediterranean tomato soup. This isn’t just fruit salad. This is hand-prepared blueberry and pomegranate super-fruit salad.’ And so on.

Year upon year they have driven me to distraction, like some subliminal video designed to make the viewer suffer from some sort of paranoid psychosis. I know the Christmas ones are almost upon us now and I have been trying to avoid the advertising channels because of it. If I accidentally catch one I’ll probably smash the telly up.

I know they aren’t supposed to appeal to skinflints like me who would no sooner do their weekly shop in Marks and Sparks than pay over £3 for a bottle of wine. I am in the wrong demographic, as it were. The correct one being, that which contains the MMTS brigade – More Money Than Sense.

My mum has a friend who does all her food shopping at Marks and Spencer’s, or Marks Expensive, as I call it. The reason is that she not only has MMTS, she also can’t cook. Apparently, it is a haven for people like her because most of the shelves are packed with ready meals: convenience food for the chattering classes.

The advertising agency responsible for Marks’ over-the-top ads have failed to grasp that they have outgrown their use, because spoofs are popping up all over the place. I myself have used unnecessarily verbose terminology in order to lull my family into thinking they are getting something far more exciting than I am actually going to dish up

‘This isn’t just cottage pie,’ I say. ‘This is hand-prepared, Aberdeen Angus minced beef slowly cooked in a finger-crumbled Oxo jus, lovingly topped with hand-peeled Wilja potato and ‘I can’t believe it’s not butter’ mash.’ And I say it in a deep, husky voice but they just look at me like I need locking up and repulsed at the same time.

Similar descriptions can be found in posh restaurants. The confusing, gaudy menus where ‘blades of beouf nestle on a bed of fondant potatoes dressed with a balsamic reduction’ just make me want to run out screaming: ‘I just want egg and chips!!’

I wonder if the pretentious, rambling descriptions are going to appear on adverts for other M& S goods – underwear, for example. Imagine not just buying pants, but organic, freshly picked hand-spun cotton, Matisse-blue hyacinth petal embellished, comfort briefs.

Let’s hope not, I couldn’t take it. It’s not just flowery, pretentious, overblown balderdash. It’s Marks and Spencer’s flowery, pretentious, overblown balderdash.

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