Features and Columns
Those pesky electronic pimps are at it again. eBay had got it's ear bent once by Bob Geldof, after Live 8 tickets were being put up for auction on the site. Now, they've noticed that some cheeky scamps were auctioning illegal Live 8 DVDs.
Now, after complaints by the music industry, eBay is removing the illegal Live 8 DVDs.
Lately, the advert industry appears to have started saying that bad manners are OK. First, there was the cripplingly bad KFC 'singing with your mouth full' campaign that attracted a record number of complaints for saying that stuffing your fat cheeks full of Zinger Burger and howling a tune was OK.
And now, a Fanta advert that shows lots of people spitting had received 272 complaints.
Over the next few weeks, months, whenever we run out of ideas, hecklerspray will be looking closely at cars.
We are not talking about the kind of motors Jeremy Clarkson would remortgage his house to own. No, we mean crap cars. Runabouts from an age when central locking meant leaning over the passenger side door to let your mate in. We love these cars for their simplicity, their charm, but most of all their price. If a motor’s not cheaper to buy than a Dyson vacuum cleaner we’re not interested. Come with us and delve retro lovers, it’s time to discover a rubbish car we love…Ford Fiesta Mark 2
If there is a person alive in the UK, perhaps aged no younger than their mid-twenties, who hasn’t driven one of these little beauties we would be very surprised. The Ford Fiesta Mark 2, once upon a time everyone’s ubiquitous ‘first car’, is now a rarer sight than a free parking space in London. In other words, they’re practically extinct. The original Mark 1 Fiesta hit the streets like a tin of rusty nails way back in 1976. Pitched for ladies and who couldn’t afford a Triumph Stag to do their shopping in, the plucky hatchback’s size, economy, and occasional appearance in episodes of The Professionals made it a big success for Ford.
Marks & Spencer have been trying for years to shed their image as purveyors of dowdy yet practical products. They've updated their clothing range and switched to free trade foodstuff, but the way in which they've finally succeeded in injecting some sex into the brand is through their current TV advertising campaign - a downright erotic promotion of their food range.
The sexy Marks & Spencer advert shows us some chicken. Then the husky female narrator sultrily explains to us that it's not just chicken. Following a dramatic pause - during which you wonder if it's also 20% rusk and 10% water - we're told that it's actually farm-reared, organic, golden, Wiltshire farm chicken.
That may be, but technically it is still just chicken. It's not going to solve the problem of world debt and you can't drive it to Milton Keynes to visit your parents.
Big news! hecklerspray is going on a transatlantic roadtrip to report all that is great, mediocre and terrible about the good ol' US of A.
Along the way, we'll be offering our opinion on bands and records from where ever we are - maybe Bruce "two fifty up the ass" Springsteen in New Jersey, for example.
It's going to be a kind of Rolling Thunder
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Bob Geldof has got typically angry at people using eBay to sell their Live 8 tickets for profit. It seems that no matter what he tries to do, it always backfires.
Bob Geldof wants to send fleets of boats across the channel to pick up
continental protesters, but it's made angry people worry about immigrants. He plans a series of big free Live 8 concerts to help African poverty, then fills them full of doddery old musicians. He tries to give the Live 8 tickets away as a gesture of goodwill, but people try and sell them on eBay. And by jove, he's had enough.Speaking for Live 8, Geldof raged at eBay. "I am sick with this. The people who are selling it are miserable wretches but far worse is the corporate culture which capitalises on people's misery".
Arnold Schwarzenegger (DVDs/Books) is the most bananas man in the world. He burns his kids' clothes! He wants to destroy the moon to stop women "bitching and whining"! He's the Governor of California!
Face it, everyone wants to live like Arnold. But we can't. And we can't live like his movie characters either, going around killing people by spearing them with pipes
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If there ever was a luxury car company in need of a serious image overhaul it's got to be Jaguar (Books).
After introducing an estate model of their furiously popular with the nouveau riche X-Type, the ailing big cats only need to bring out a new over-sixties mobility range and they’ll be less cool than buying a box of Frosties just so you can get the little lightsaber. During the 60s and 70s Jaguar were a car company synonymous with everything that was fly about polluting the atmosphere. Their cars were big, edgy, looked bloody cool being shot at in gangster films, and most importantly parents hated them. They had the youth factor. You wanted to own an E-Type because it was baddass.
