OI! FATTY! IT’S JANUARY SO YOU’D BEST GET ON THE TREADMILL! Is what I’d be shouting at you if I wasn’t one of you; a Festive over-indulger that left a world of salad and steak for one populated almost exclusively by Toblerone and Terry’s Chocolate Oranges. We’ve all been there and now you’re probably sitting clutching your list of New Year’s Resolutions desperately trying to convince yourself that you’ll achieve all of the things on it.

You won’t.

Why should you? You’re your own person and you don’t need a list of goals to tell you that you should probably crack open a bag of cress every now and then before you start to resemble Michelle MacManus & Rik Waller’s illicit love-child. You don’t even need a list of goals to tell you that it might be time to get yourself on a dating website and meet someone new before you fall into the arms of an ex-lover because you’re horribly lonely.

None of that matters though because there’s always something better than a list and in this case adverts are willing to take on the role of your conscience and the New Year ad schedule is packed with sanctimonious bullshit designed to get you out there into the world looking svelte and feeling amazing thanks to some pro-biotic yogurt.

That’s the thing about adverts, isn’t it? They play up to an accepted norm about the society that you live in. Take the hideous Morrisons advert in which two middle-aged children discuss the recession and the need for people to ‘tighten their belts’ in January. You think this is fine because they’re Northern but they’re actually creating a sickening dystopian vision of a world where children are no longer free to be children and have to think about food vouchers and Freddie Flintoff’s bath of gold doubloons. Of course, Morrisons are trying to add an innocent expression onto something that responsible adults seem to talk about all the time whereas some ad campaigns are just cynical.

Take a moment, shut your eyes and imagine a meeting room where six people are sitting. None of them are wearing suits or any kind of formal business attire and one is wearing a pair of tattered brogues with no socks. One man fiddles nervously with his spectacles as he examines the stoney faces around the room. They’ve been given the ultimate contract; a weight loss brand that needs a change of direction.

One woman in the group suddenly rolls back in her ergonomic back-supporting office chair and makes a loud exclamation of joy. “I’ve got it,” she shouts, “why don’t we show overweight people that if they follow the Weight Watchers plan, it’ll make them thin?!”

There is a stunned silence in the meeting room and the glass walls begin to de-mist as their collective breath is held. Everyone looks to the man wearing a rugby shirt at the head of the table. He nods sagely and the room erupts in applause. The creatives have done it again! Fat people can be thin and they will show them the light!

“Wait though!” Cries the man with no socks. “How can we convince our target audience of saturated fatties that they want to be thin and beautiful?” The room falls silent again: all that can be heard is the nervous tapping of pens on the table.

“What about writing a song and getting a pop star to sing it?” The quietest woman suggests. “We could make the lyrics really motivational so that they really speak to our target market?”

There is some muted discussion in the room. It’s too quiet for us to hear but we all know that they’re discussing who to have sing it. Rik Waller and Michelle MacManus are busy making babies and Craig Colton from last year’s X Factor is far too shit. They need someone that people can aspire to be like. Someone sassy and respectable that will quite literally sell their soul for money.

If only there was someone that fitted the bill. They have a long conversation and seem to come up with nothing. They’re standing up to leave, presumably off to think about it over some champagne and oysters when a Britain’s Got Talent judge walks into their office, looking for scraps.

“Hark!” They cry in unison as this fictional account becomes alarmingly Dickensian. They’ve found their woman. A sassy, respectable woman with a big, idiotic face who would quite literally sell her soul for money. They don’t even need to negotiate with her. Alesha’s shaking hands with them all before they even name a figure. Her only stipulation is that she doesn’t have to touch any of the fatties and that she doesn’t have to rap. She’s moving in a new direction.

Now you know how the Play Weight Watchers campaign came into being, aren’t you a little more open to its message and its 3 minutes and 14 seconds of bad miming, worse dancing and sanctimonious ‘body positive’ thrust? Doesn’t the sight of these people who, you’ve got to hand it to them, look great inspire you to go out there and go to meetings, living by a strict ‘point controlled’ system which requires you to lose weight by emptying your wallet?

Or does it still make you want to tear your own eyes out and stuff them into your ears so that you don’t have to see or hear this abomination ever again? What’s it going to be, fatso?

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s not dilly-dally around the issue of Christmas advertising. It’s everywhere and it’s so aggressive that 90% of the time you feel less like it’s the most wonderful time of the year™ and is more akin to being drugged and lured onto a railway platform by a sexually excited Jeremy Clarkson.

It’s only really supermarkets that show any interest in being nurturing and suggesting that your entire Christmas experience will be easier if you shop with them. That is until you step through their front door to be confronted by a modern-day reenactment of the Battle of the Somme. You’ve all seen it. Grandmothers entrenched in the biscuit aisle launching barrage after barrage of garibaldis on the “boche” in their dugouts made from microwavable Christmas puddings and tiny tubs of brandy butter.

There’s obviously some digression in there. The long and short of it is that Christmas marketing is mostly lies and aggressive selling to make us feel bad that we haven’t spent enough money.

That is until you hit the kids’ market. What’s the best way to make you, the adult, feel like you haven’t spent enough on your little bundles of joy? That’s the easiest job in marketing. Tell the kids about all this great stuff that they don’t have. You don’t even have to mention it explicitly; kids are so inherently evil that they know exactly what features the latest all-singing, all-dancing Optimus Prime figure has without even needing to be told so marketing becomes even easier.

The real problem is, what do you do when you’re not shouting directly at the children? You need a song. You need a really, really catchy song. You need a song that people can recite the lyrics to despite not having heard it in 300 days. Why not try something like this?

Yes! That’s it, that’s the one. You’re singing it now. There could be anything written on this line and you wouldn’t have a bloody clue. Your child is hideously ugly. Anyway, let’s move on. Toys R’ Us gave us one of the most iconic Christmas adverts of all time with this effort. You can’t see any of the products but you know it sells toys and an absolute ton of them at that. Easy, right?

Subsequently they have updated the advert every year to take into account new advances in animation etc. As you can see in this one from last year they just updated the animation without removing any of the message from the advert. You can buy pretty much any toys you want from this superstore from a massive, anthropomorphic giraffe. Why change a winning a winning formula?

Well, they did and now we have this.

Oh.

Usually we’d spent another 500 words picking the ad apart and referring back to what was said in the opening paragraphs. That’s pretty much the structure of one of these articles. To break from the tradition though, here’s an impassioned plea from people who grew up thinking Toys R’ Us was the most magical and wonderful place in the universe (because we could bully our parents into buying us toys).

Toys R’ Us isn’t Argos. It’s not somewhere to pragmatically advertise the product and the price in a bland ineffective way. You’re trying to capture the imagination of kids without having to resort to a Bieber-esque musical number about remaining a target for paedophiles well into your late thirties.

Change it back.

Go on.

Seriously. You know what you’ve done, that’s why you’ve disabled the comments on your new ad. You know it’s terrible as well. You’ve paid good money to inflict that upon the public and now you can’t take it back. We know that and we don’t blame you for it. Next year though, eh? Let’s see a triumphant return to the good ol’ days.

If you don’t, you’ll probably lose an entire generation of Toys R’ Us kids, kids, kids, kid, kid, ki, ki, ki, k.

There is a definite trend of companies recycling their expensive adverts of yesteryear in order to save themselves a bit of cash. To be honest, there isn’t a lot we can say as a criticism of that. Times are tough and if your product hasn’t changed very much then why bother going to the effort of making a whole new advert to extoll the exact same virtues.

While there’s nothing wrong with it on the face of it, some ads remind us that they were completely awful in the first place and, like last week, we’re looking into the murky, sugar-loaded world of soft drinks.

Are they a bargain? ‘Cause everyone loves a bargain, and don’t try to pretend that you don’t. There is evidence to suggest that we are more likely to buy things if they are on some kind of offer, be it ‘buy one get one free’, ‘two for the price of one’ or ‘buy six and get thirty free pictures of stick-men in various sexual positions’.

However sometimes getting two for the price of one isn’t as good as it may seem.

Take this prime example from Fanta:

Let’s not waste too much time on this. Why are these cuddly cartoon characters partying it up with Fanta? Fanta with no alcohol in it. Perhaps it’s a very British attitude to have but alcohol is party juice. We’ve never had a sip of Fanta and felt compelled to crowdsurf, unless it was to crowdsurf to the Coca Cola Company’s HQ and tell them that it doesn’t taste as good as it used to and ask them if they’ve tried Orangina.

Still. Perhaps this ad will teach us the best way to recover from awkward social situations at parties. This las recovers using mime as a form of modern dance. MIME! If you used mime as a method of recovering from an embarrassing door-face-interaction you’d be laughed out of that party into the waiting arms of a junkie who would promise to take you back in time to 1936 when that move was cool.

Boys don’t like to be phantom-lassoed. Just a hint there, ladies.

Demographically, the first part of the advert is confusing. This party infested by Bieber/Jonas-ites (similarity to parasites withstanding) who don’t want to drink or have crazy sex at a party but just stand around and drink Fanta. Who’s the demographic for this advert? Is it only being shown on the Disney channel?

We thought that this train of thought might peter out but then we popped on to Fanta’s official website and saw The Fantanas; a girl band manufactured to sing songs about the beautiful taste of Fanta.

Is it too much to hope that Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato will be sharpening their bitch-sticks and trimming their mullets ready for some kind of gimp-pop showdown with these girls? Coming to Disney Channel Pay-Per-View soon!

Still, let’s move onto the tagline, shall we?

“MORE FANTA. LESS SERIOUS.”

More Fanta, less serious is the entire tag to this advert. Less serious about fun, less serious about taste, less serious about music, less serious about styles of dancing that aren’t entirely anachronistic, less serious about advertising.

Possibly the thing that irks us the most is the fact that it’s not over yet.

You probably don’t want to buy a bottle of Fanta yet so let’s have an entirely different advert with an entirely different feel. Why they did this, no-one knows, but we can only imagine that the graphics people were on a roll and just launched straight into a new advert.

They’ve taken the most boring situation possible, some kind of lecture where the lecturer stands in silence, reading the latest Dan Brown novel and ignoring the class. They’re bored of the lazy, untalented writing style which oozes from the page like a noxious gas. This putrid, useless pile of paper is scarcely worthy of propping open the door of this classroom. The door through which the class are about to rush out of into the Friday sun to their friends and Fanta and a complete lack of fun or entertainment.

The clock dings (helpfully, it says Friday so it saves you having to climb inside the television and consult a calendar) and suddenly the room is transformed into a club. A club. It’s 5 o’clock on a Friday! Go home and get changed. Have some dinner or something! Responsible drinking kids. Drinking Fanta in excess will make you all gassy.

“GRAB A TASTE OF FRIDAY.”

Answer us this, ladies and gentlemen. Does Fanta taste like Friday? Just because it’s alliterative? Of course it doesn’t. For a start, we’ve seen one of these things on a Tuesday. What are they saying to us?

“You still have most of the week to get through before you’ll be able to lick any surface and it will taste like Fanta! Ha!”

How dare they.

What’s a true taste of Friday? Revomitted vodka. Get to work, people.

Cars. Automobiles. Vehicles. Things with engines. On four wheels (sometimes three) that often get covered in ice during winter and, if you get leather seats, are too hot to sit in during the summer. Yes, our four wheeled friends are so much a part of our everyday life that it takes the release of Disney Pixar’s ‘Cars’ to actually make us consider the fact that cars might have feelings too.

Which they don’t.

And that’s a good thing because if certain cars had feelings they would almost certainly see themselves as hideous, nutrient-guzzling windbags with no friends either on the road or in the driveway. It would likely drive them to self harm, presumably by slashing their own tires while sitting in a puddle. Who knows? It’s rarely a good idea to personify inanimate objects too far as they are likely to take on a terrifying edge the next time you clamber into one to pop down to the shops.

It’s a real shame for cars. Assuming that cars do have feelings which- admittedly- might be a bit of a stretch for some of our readers who believe that Justin Bieber has a penis and that Tom Hardy can spell, it is easy to assume that being a car makes for an incredibly depressing life. You see, cars just aren’t that good looking any more. It used to be that cars were either sleek lines or grudging, grunting boxes with all the welcoming appeal of Theresa May naked in a jacuzzi but still, unlike Theresa May in a jacuzzi, one could respect the car for at least making the effort.

If cars did indeed have feelings, they’d realise how much the tone of advertising had changed. The focus is no longer on the car itself, its sleek line, its fuel efficiency or even how safe it is for the driver if you were to slam it into a child at fifty miles per hour. Now the car has become such a hideous pariah in its own industry that it’s better to focus on completely abstract elements of life instead of on the car itself. One need only look at the frankly ludicrous Renault Clio advert which stars almost every popular culture reference ever used to sell a car which is hanging from the ceiling in a state of impotent fury (more personification there).

It would be easy to suggest that the end of this advert shows the lynching of the car. The evil, putrid, spewing, belching demi-corpse of the car in a world where people passively snigger at Top Gear before complaining that their Prius doesn’t get enough miles to the gallon. People need to make up their minds. Do they hate cars or love them?

Funnily enough, it’s not just the car-buying public that have to decide what the hell they want from cars. Citroën, for example, have just released an advert which basically challenges people to buy their new DS4 model.

In the past we’ve been told that it’s rude to pick apart someone’s hard work for comic effect but to be fair, not everyone has to work this hard to produce an advert so full of preposterous misinformation. Let’s open with some yeses. Yes, you will work Sunday. Yes, you will take your hideously materialistic bitch of a wife shopping despite the fact that you’ve been working all day at your job and are knackered. Yes, you will buy coffee from Starbucks and meat from a supermarket because it’s just easier and you’re knackered from working at your job where your boss under-rates your contribution and exhausted from your home life where your hideously materialistic bitch of a wife complains because you’re ALWAYS BLOODY WORKING!

It’s little wonder that you end up conforming so much that when the opportunity arises to get fully naked in a jacuzzi with the Home Secretary arises, you’re too tired to do anything but give into the bubbles and those hard, calloused, Thatcherite hands.

Funnily enough, the Citroën DS4 is (in looks if not in policies) similar to a fully nude Theresa May in a jacuzzi. By conforming so much in life, you feel the need to break the chain and either engage in warm, wet… but still dry, disappointing coitus with a Cabinet Minister or buy a car that looks a bit like her. You know, all curiously smoothed lines where there was previously a jutting line.

It is easy to conclude that buying a Citroën DS4 is the lesser of two evils in this instance. At least in buying a hideously deformed car, so ugly that they only show it on screen for a few seconds, you are not committing an act of adultery. Although, you’ll never sell your tell-all story to a tabloid and bring down the government of the day in a whirlwind of sex scandal if you just buy a badly designed five-door coupé, will you?

That doesn’t mean that you won’t take our personification of vehicles too far and end up in a tabloid with your genitals enveloped in an exhaust pipe though. It’s all about headlines.

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Let’s just face facts right here and now. We’re pathetic. All of us. You reading this, us writing it and especially those that have to edit it. We all feel lonely sometimes and where some of us can just walk into a public house, identify someone they would like to engage in coitus with and then leave with them, many of us lack that ‘cutting edge’ or, as it is sometimes ominously known, killer instinct.

While we’re all sitting in the corner of those pubs looking at those people and wishing that we were them. Those people with the confidence and the sheer bravado to just  say what they want, maintain eye contact and end up getting what they want.

We sit in the corner looking at the other sad, sunken faces around us, unable to even make eye contact with them. Everything has gone wrong with your life and seeing these people, able to show confidence in their lives seems to exacerbate the lack of companionship in yours.

You have options though. You go home and you switch on the computer. You have two options.

Option number one is the traditional response to loneliness. Remove your undergarments and reach climax while crying. It’s commonly known as crymaxing. You’ve probably already done it once today. The other option is to get yourself on a dating website. There are hundreds of sites all claiming to match you in different ways and with different people from match.com to the worryingly baseless UniformDating.com.

Sure, eHarmony looks lovely, doesn’t it? They give you a partner based on deep compatibility and we’re sure that they’re very, very ethical about it. However, what if there was a dating website for people with no ethics, no morals and no grasp of common decency?

What if hecklerspray did dating? What would that look like?

Oh… that.

At hecklerspray, there are few things we hate more than watching television. It’s so irritating isn’t it? With its loud, garish programmes invariably starring some Northern “comic” trying to rehash the glory days when you could watch someone win a microwave on Bullseye and be genuinely delighted for them.

TV will never change. It will always be either shouting things at you like the Apprentice’s “YOU’LL NEVER BE AS SUCCESSFUL AS THIS LOT” or subtly trying to make you change the way you think.

It’s not TV’s fault as in, it’s not the box in the corner of your living room’s fault that it does this. The world is all about shouting at people and forcing them into making decisions. Companies and governments lie, cheat and deceive you on a daily basis in the interest of adding a few more zeroes to the end of their bonus cheques. By now, you’re probably thinking about what you’re going to do with that rancid chicken breast that you bought from the supermarket the other day while somewhere, a bankrupt butcher sobs into a sirloin steak and goes to work for Morrisons.

It’s a sad state of affairs but it’s one that we accept.

This isn’t some sort of call to arms. It’s just vitally important that we tell you that at some point during the Badvertising series. All advertising is a web of clever deceptions designed to make you believe that the product you never thought you wanted is the product that you’ve always needed. It’s how things are and it’s how things have been for centuries.

Even your favourite adverts are designed to trick you into thinking that you need it. Remember the Cadbury’s Gorilla? Of course you do- it was that advert where they dressed Phil Collins up in a gorilla costume and got him to play the drum part from that horrible song ‘In The Air Tonight’ or whatever it’s actually called. That’s got nothing to do with the chocolate at all but by producing ‘water cooler’ TV, they managed to boost their sales by word of mouth. It’s cynical and half the time, people don’t realise they’re having crap peddled to them.

Even one of our favourite adverts (that is streamed once a day before we’re all allowed out of the bedsit), the now infamous ‘Never Say No To Panda’ campaign from the agency Elephant Cairo (they’re Egyptian, in case you were in any doubt) is one of those water cooler ads designed to sell based more on the advert itself rather than the reputation or quality of the product itself.

You see? You don’t learn anything about the cheese from that. It took us a couple of views before we realised it was actually cheese. We still wanted some. After all, any company that green-lights an advertising campaign like that can’t make crap cheese, can they? Of course not.

After all, the chances of anyone being accosted by a violent panda if they turn down a cheese-based snack are around a million to one; perhaps more when you consider the fact that there aren’t that many pandas left in the world. That’s a shame because everyone loves the idea of cuddling up to a snuzzy wuzzy panda.

We love the panda so much that we went and made a t-shirt to pay tribute to him. Look:

Maybe if you were to buy one, that boy/girl/hermaphrodite that you’ve always had a crush on will see you as the snuzzy wuzzy panda and, in an unfortunate comparison, see your genitals as the irrefutable cheese. Isn’t that worth a try? You can buy a ‘Never Say No To Panda’ t-shirt from our store.

Oh. You didn’t see what this was, did you? Maybe you should be a bit more vigilant next time or it won’t just be a snazzy t-shirt you’re ordering.

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Music on adverts is, sometimes, the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone, ever. Worse than being in a concentration camp for 10 years. Think we’re hamming it up? Let us remind you of the jingles from the Go Compare adverts. Or the We Buy Any Car one.

Wishing you didn’t have ears now?

Well, not all music on commercials is woeful. In fact, sometimes, it is really, really cool. Old hits are given new leases of life via TV and new bands break vital ground with a well placed piece of music.

And so, the folks behind the new Heineken ‘Entrance’ campaign have asked us to argue amongst ourselves about which commercials have had the best songs. A heated debate in hecklerspray bedsit saw fistfights and knives drawn, but ultimately, we think we have the best list to please musos and… er… advert lovers alike.

It’s worth pointing out that, in the new Heineken ad, they’ve got a band called The Asteroid Galaxy Tour performing their new song ‘The Golden Age’ and irritatingly for us (who like slating stuff), its actually quite good.

If you want to watch the video for it, click here.

Anyway, here’s what we consider to be the 10 best songs to appear in commercials and no, it won’t feature Lionel Richie singing about crisps. Thank god.

Mr Oizo ‘Flat Beat’

Mr Oizo is one of the strangest people in music, creating films and music without much regard for what other people think about it. Even stranger then that he should land a big advertising campaign featuring his most famous creation – a puppet called Flat Eric.

Zombies ‘Time Of The Season’

Some cider company (we forget which) decided to use a load of sixties tracks to promote their brand and the best of the bunch was this cool slice of British psychedelia from The Zombies.

Marvin Gaye ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’

Although the original wasn’t actually used in the famous jeans commercial (they got some bloke to rerecord it), Marvin’s version of ‘Grapevine’ was reappraised by the British public and, sadly, made a star out of Nick Kamen as well who went onto release singles that were so awful that people vowed never to listen to anything at all, ever again. Ever. Still, Gaye’s track is well worth the penalty.

Leftfield ‘Phat Planet’

‘Phat Planet’ almost seems tailor made for the commercial it appeared in. White knuckle tension and positively filthy beats, Leftfield found themselves borderline famous after this appeared on the television with a bloke surfing with horses.

Velvet Underground ‘Venus In Furs’

We’ll use any excuse to feature the Velvets on hecklerspray. Any at all.

Jose Gonzales ‘Heartbeats’

The Knife did alright, careerwise, out of Sony’s decision to make hundreds of coloured balls fall slowly down a hill to Jose Gonzales’ take on ‘Heartbeats’. Altogether, a very pleasing campaign.

Andy Williams ‘Music To Watch Girls By’

M&S made Andy Williams a surprise hit when they used the ye-ye sounding ‘Music To Watch Girls By’ in one of their promotional campaigns. We’re still waiting for everyone to start liking him again so we can sing ‘Happy Heart’ in public without feeling self-aware.

Lalo Schifrin ‘Bullitt’

Some car company or other (possibly Ford) decided to use one of the (if not the) coolest film themes ever written. Lalo Schifrin has been responsible for many cool tracks, but this is quite obviously the best of the bunch.

Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66 ‘Mas Que Nada’

That Nike advert. This tune. Perfect.

James Clarke ‘Blow Up A Go Go’

Gap used this cheeky instrumental to take the brand from almost unheard of in Britain to a household name overnight. Hammond organs a go go!

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At hecklerspray, we’re always up for a knees-up. Even if we’re not invited, we’ll at least try to crash various parties until the police are called.

The next major party on our calendar is that of our lord saviour Jesus Christ. When he was born on December 25, not only did he know he’d be worshiped by millions, but he’d have to die for our sins. Sorry about that Jesus – we didn’t mean to squash the neighbour’s cat when reversing down the street.

Instead of it being called Jesus day, that day is often referred to as Christmas. While we use it to chomp on dry turkey, multinational corporations use it as a tool to promote their badly-made product.

Bearing in mind that it’s only just November, DFS are already telling us to buy quickly so they can deliver an Italian three-piece suite to our house in time for Christmas. Last time we checked, sofas and Jesus had nothing in common. That’s unless he was a greasy Italian man who made chairs and talked in a funny accent while eating pizza.

This advert isn’t the worst one we’ve seen on TV, but the fact that Christmas is being whored out to us now is nothing short of depressing. Every year Christmas seems to be arriving that little bit quicker. Expect Easter eggs to be prominently displayed from the 2nd of January 2009. You know, so you can buy early and save precious pennies.

You know how adverts for expensive perfume are bewilderingly oblique to the point that you often spend up to 30 minutes afterwards scratching your head and wondering what you’d just watched?

That feeling isn’t just limited to perfume commercials, you know. The Safestyle double glazing TV adverts have been running on and off for years, and yet every time one of them is broadcast we find ourselves quivering in the foetal position trying to chew our own shoulder off afterwards because we just can’t work any of it out.

In short, the Safestyle ad is a commercial so confusing that this is the only logical conversation that could have possibly taken place at the advertising brainstorming meeting:

Safestyle executive: “OK, so the benefits of double glazing are clear to everyone – noise reduction, heat insulation, security – and we’d also like to highlight some of our financial incentives as well. Any ideas?”

Advertiser: “Yes! Why don’t we find a obnoxious, self-consciously wacky bald man who looks like he’s from Narnia and makes Barry Scott look like the world’s finest Shakespearean actor, dress him up like a Medieval time-traveller from the future and make him walk around the world’s cheapest set destroying your own products and bellowing at the viewers in a way that’s virtually guaranteed to offend all of them into never using your company for anything?”

Safestyle executive: “Well, um, that’s not really…”

Advertiser: “I saved your life, John. Remember? In the war? I dragged your injured body to safety through minefields and machine gun fire. You said you were forever indebted to me. Remember that?”

Safestyle executive: “Oh, alright then.”

Watch the gruesome Safetyle UK advert now

Comic book fans will no doubt be aware that seminal 1980s graphic novel Watchmen is making its way to the big screen.

What you might not know, however, is that director Zack Snyder commissioned an intriguing little competition for amateur film-makers to contribute to the upcoming feature. Entrants had to create a TV commercial set within the Watchmen universe – an alternative-history 1985 where superheroes have driven key world events.

Got some time to waste? Good. Then you can pop over to YouTube and have a look at some of the winning entries. They're all frankly fantastic, with a particular favourite being the spot-on toy commercial.

Oh – and is this the geekiest post in hecklerspray history? Very possibly.

When you think of Birds Eye, you think of food. You don’t think of once popular singers who hail from East Sussex.

Sadly though, it seems that Suggs, the singer of Madness has decided to suck the corporate cock of Birds Eye and let them ejaculate a substantial amount of money in his direction. All so he can promote their range of frozen foods. Everyone knows that the true spokesman of Birds Eye is, of course, Captain Birdseye – a man who could get us to eat anything from the sea, be it squid, eel or part of a rusty old bike. He had us in his fishy smelling palm. No-one could better him.

And it’s great to see Suggs make an absolute twat of himself as he tries to become the new Captain Birdseye. We don’t care if Birds Eye makes good mood food. Not when Suggs is making adverts that make us feel like we’ve died a bit inside. Just fuck off back to your creepy street where all the neighbours seem to like each other and there’s no annoying kid refusing to eat the same as everyone else.