Pre-determination is something that the same fools who believe in superstition go in for in a big way. You might recognise it as fate or the ‘thundering approach to emotional and financial oblivion’. If you believe in fate then you probably married the first person who ever gave you an orgasm and are now woefully unhappy, only able to console yourself by watching romantic comedies.

Even as you do so, you realise everything seems to work out well for the shining-faced Hollywood elite. That is despite their belief and reliance on exactly the same concept which has led you to a life of raised voices and thinly veiled hatred. Fate worked out okay for them, didn’t it? Why not you?

Anyway, enough about your bitter, twisted existence.

You see, fate is a weapon which is used against you. From your formative years, you’ll remember the fairy tales where the prince always met the beautiful princess and guess what: they lived happily ever after. It was never a case of boy meets girl, girl meets other boy and they all lived horribly ever after, only communicating through lawyers, was it? Their fates were mapped out and they knew that the person they ended up with would be “the one” for them. That’s not just because royal families are notorious for marrying internally and producing offspring with webbed toes; it’s because the fates are strong with these ones.

As you begin to grow up, you’ll move onto “teen” things for “teens” and these are a little bit more angsty. You’ll see people going through highly glossed break-ups and angry retribution because you’re a teenager and this stuff is designed to fill you with the proper quotient of ire about the world you’re forced to grow up in. “Why can’t things be like they are in fairytales?” You’ll post on your Tumblr (or your diary, depending on how old you are) but let’s face it. Teen dramas always end with the two buff dickheads who broke up at the start getting back together or meeting their future spouses through their ex. There’s always the suggestion of serendipity, even if your warped teenage mind can’t get your head round it.

When you’re older, you think you’re wiser and you won’t fall for silly things like fate but just wait until that person you quite fancied at school adds you on Facebook and you’ll find yourself wondering ‘what if’. You’ve been conditioned to believe in fate and pre-determination. That’s why adverts have become so predictable.

Take this latest example of fuckwaddery from BT. Unable to tie ‘the berk from My Family’ down to a new contract, BT were forced to try and update THE GREATEST DRAMA OF OUR MODERN AGE without mentioning the fact that Whatsisface died in a horrifying Space Shuttle crash in the Adriatic Sea. They decided to go back to the start to when Whatsisname from My Family met Whoserface from other things by sending one of the irritating children to university. Presumably to study for a proper degree given that he’ll never get another acting job after this (I’m willing to be proved wrong on that one).

You see, if you go back in time to the original advert, Thingy and Whozit meet through a completely serendipitous moment. Fast forward to 2012 and here’s Young Whozit running into a girl who wants to live in the same flat as him. No looks are shared but you can tell where this is going.

There’s not much to say about the advert itself. You can all see the sheer idiocy of the creepy ‘geek’ who has an interest in touching the bits of Young Whozit’s future love and I’m quite sure you can visualise trying to make friends in your teenage years by talking about the speed of broadband (or dial-up… or fax machines… or how long it takes to dial a phone… or send a telegram). It’s not something that marks you out as an interesting human being.

It does show that BT are going back to the start and the cycle of fortunate events will begin anew. The two will enjoy a blossoming romance, held together by a love of superfast broadband (which isn’t superfast at all) while ‘the geek’ tries to ruin the blossoming romance by hilariously spiking the wrong person’s drink on a night out. Or something. It doesn’t matter. Four years down the line, you’ll be at a wedding in the ad break for Britain’s Got Talent and you’ll wonder where the hell we all went wrong.

Is it their fault for relying on the same old bullshit to shift Broadband plans or is it yours for buying into it from childhood?

News has reached us here at hecklerspray of a really tragic event that should highlight age issues throughout our society. For too long people have gone about their daily lives, scarcely giving a thought to the older people in our society, people who are too old and frail to care for themselves properly.

As the economic slump continues and people find it just too damned expensive to squeeze out babies like they’re going out of fashion, the world’s population will continue to get older and it is to our older friends and neighbours that we must look to and offer a helping hand in their hour of need.

It’s news like this that really hammers that fact home.

Yes, we are loathe to report to you that 63 year old Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler has taken a “nasty fall” in the shower and has been rushed to hospital.

Little is known of his current condition but it has been suggested that the American Idol judge escaped with only a few broken teeth with doctors claiming that his injuries could have been much worse if his lips hadn’t cushioned the fall. hecklerspray is thankful that this elder statesman is due to make a full, toothy recovery.

Unfortunately, the Aerosmith representative that we didn’t speak to was unable to give us any more information on the older gentleman’s condition but did suggest that he may have to use a wheelchair as part of a publicity stunt.

Please folks. Hug a pensioner. Unless they’re off their tits on smack, obviously.

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It’s not easy to be nasty professionally. For a start, people automatically assume that you have no heart and that if you do, it’s a blackened, flaking husk that makes people unable to spend time in the same room as you. Admittedly for the most part, that’s true. Sometimes, you also have to poke fun at something that you wouldn’t usually consider an acceptable target.

However, here at hecklerspray we don’t “hate on” people unnecessarily (unless they’re a celebrity) and, to that end, we don’t want our readers to think that this article is going out of its way to disrespect its elders. hecklerspray writers are regularly in contact with the elder members of our community and, once we’ve stolen their wallets and purses, we sometimes give them their bus passes back.

Not always though. We wouldn’t want people to think we’re soft.

Older people in themselves aren’t the problem here and we wouldn’t be so lazy as to spend hundreds of words having sly digs at pensioners for not being able to use a computer as we’re blatantly aware that most of them are better at it than us. Our very own Lauren Mullineaux performs most of her computer-based tasks by hacking wildly at the mouse until something happens and even our editor Mof Gimmers spends a good portion of his day smashing his face off his keyboard in a desperate effort to make words appear on the site.

Of course, the elderly are pretty great. They lived in the eras that your nostalgic love of vintage clothing is rooted. They’ve seen things than we can only imagine by looking them up on Youtube and sometimes they need a bit of help. It’s not our responsibility to outline the problems facing British pensioners, we write funny articles and to outline actual tales of strife or poverty on it would be irresponsible and ill-advised. We don’t seek to poke fun at the impoverished or ill in this world.

Okay?

Good. What we do seek to do however is sigh indignantly at this awful pile of utter claptrap from Age UK’s advertising people which seems to be entitled ‘Thank You’.

Of course it shouldn’t be called thank you, should it? It should be titled “Who The Hell Do You Think You Are Getting Us To Do This Degrading Crap?”. The people in this advert seem as though they’ve gone off their own backs to make a lovely message to all the people who have donated to the campaign but- as with most adverts- it’s composed almost entirely of odious stereotypes and ‘bawdy’ humour.

It’s designed with the sole intention of making you think “Aw, look at those ol’ cards out there having a good time.” Incorrect and you know it. The first time you saw the advert you stared in dumbfounded silence at these old men and women allowing their good nature to be sent up.

Admittedly, it’s quite nice to see a light-hearted advert for a charity. There are so many awful things happening in the world right now that it’s a brave step not to show a 40 second black and white advert of a frail old lady hunched and dying alone in front of The Wright Stuff. However, there are better ways to do it than playing up to clichés and making these poor old bastards look like idiots on national television.

Stereotypes?! We hear you cry. Well, yes. Here’s a Top of the Pops-style list in chronological order.

• “Yer granny cannie sing.” – It’s a well-established fact among advertisers that old ladies can’t sing or, if they can, they’re usurped by a gravel-faced crone before they can belt out a note.
• “Some old ladies are a bit saucy.” – Yes, you’ve seen Calendar Girls and you probably got a little bit excited. Believe it or not, old people have sexual urges just like you and advertisers love playing up to it. It’s only a matter of time until a sexual element is introduced to Werthers’ Or- [LAZY PAEDOPHILIA JOKE REMOVED IN SELF-EDITING].
• “An arhythmic black gentleman” – Well… no, that’s actually not a stereotype at all. It is quite unusual to see a black person portrayed in advertising as something other than gyrating like James Brown with haemorrhoids. Although he is dressed as a janitor. We’re not saying that was deliberate.
• “Belly dancing!” – You’re retired and there’s nothing better to do than go to classes in a traditional Middle Eastern dance, is there? Well, that’s what ‘creatives’ think.
• “Go to Egypt!” - Oh. Well. That’s actually a bit culturally insensitive, isn’t it? But that’s okay though because in advertising, elderly people are culturally insensitive! So “walking like an Egyptian” while wearing a Fez and carrying a giant representation of the power symbol of an ancient and noble culture is totally fine. Old people, eh? Insensitive bastards.
• “Hula girls!” - Actually, no. This is getting a bit weird now. Apart from the dancing going on in the background and the shop-mobility dodgems, everything’s getting a bit odd. There’s a grinning man in his seventies juggling on a unicycle. Is that a thing?

Of course, it loses it there and everything goes off into tangental weirdness because the people who have been hired to produce the advert seem to have precious little knowledge of pensioners. We’re not suggesting for a minute that pensioners aren’t ‘wacky’ but the entire minute long film has a sneering air of being penned on a whiteboard by a preening public school turd called Tarquin who has only ever seen one pensioner and they were in a box at a Wake.

The same goes for Wonga’s new advert which sneers at pensioners by portraying them all as ‘street’ talking puppets. Still, at least it’s better than some of their previous offerings. Unlike the money-grabbing loansmen, at least Age UK is a cause worthy of people’s attention even if they’ve chosen to market themselves in a really stupid way.

There are so many calls to move away from the traditional standards of advertising, especially when you’re focussing on one group of people. Nothing ever changes in the advertising world, as we hope reading Badvertising will prove. Things that are seen as fresh and imaginative usually aren’t. You’ll have seen the same clichés and bastardisations of themes trotted out time and time again. People think that their ‘markets’ are too stupid to realise.

You’re not.

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Beer. Lager. Come on folks. We all love a nice cool, refreshing lager after a hard day sitting in the bedsit, angrily hacking words into our typewriters but lager advertising is notorious for playing up to ‘laddy’ stereotypes or generally misrepresenting the product as being anything more than yellow piss-water that no-one in their right mind would splash out three quid on.

Beer advertising is a minefield. On the one hand you have pressure from the public saying “GIVE US MORE BOOZE AND GIVE US IT CHEAPER!” and on the other there is pressure from regulators and central government saying, “DON’T GIVE THEM MORE BOOZE, THEY KEEP HITTING EACH OTHER  WITH BROKEN BOTTLES!”

Under such pressure it is difficult to encourage people to consume the product in quantity which, make no mistake, is exactly what alcohol manufacturers want you to do. The more you buy, the more they sell to pubs, clubs, supermarkets and off-licenses.

The more you drink, the more you poison your liver, the more money they make. They’re like drug dealers or tobacco companies. Or are they?

Yes. Fundamentally speaking, they are.

Therefore the companies have to work much harder to make sure that their products are distanced from the actual aim of the thing and are seen more as rewarding you for a hard day doing whatever the hell it is that you do with your day. As such, you’ll have noticed a move towards the aspirational side of things. Carlsberg have moved from their “If Carlsberg Did…” campaign, as people were beginning to realise that Carlsberg isn’t the best lager in the world- not even close.

According to a website all about advertising (that actually believes the nonsense they write:

“The aim of the re-launch was to focus the brand around a universal human truth — the connection between endeavour, achievement and pleasure. This is captured in the new tag line “That calls for a Carlsberg”. The creative reflects on the pleasure of an ice cold beer as a reward for achievement.

The opening thematic campaign features landmark moments in history, giving them a twist and placing Carlsberg as the reward.”

Yes, that’s exactly what they’ve done…

EVEREST! One of man’s crowning achievements. The cold, the sheer altitude and the time it takes to climb, it remains one of the most mysterious and tragic locations on earth. Everest is so rooted in the mind as being a challenge that we refer to our biggest life challenges as being our ‘Everest’. It’s one of the focal points of human endeavour.

You would never look at a person who had just climbed Everest and call them a berk. You would look at them with appreciation for their resolve and respect for the mountain that they conquered.

It’s hard to imagine standing on Everest’s peak, looking out across the entire planet (okay, not quite) from its highest point. It would surely take your breath away, if the thinness of the air hadn’t done that already. It’s easy to imagine long minutes of stunned silence and reflection from the expedition while they take time to absorb the full scale of the task they had just accomplished. It’s a life-changing moment.

It’s a champagne moment. It’s a really expensive malt whisky moment. It is, if you’re pushed, a really good Czech beer moment. It is not a moment where you whip out eight tins of 3.8% abv Carlsberg and toast to the achievement before smacking each other about because someone “looked at the Sherpa funny”.

Carlsberg, at a push, is a reward for all the other taps in the pub being off or for it being on special offer in a club. It is absolutely not the reward for life-changing, momentous events because, by that logic, If Carlsberg Made Human Endeavour Then It Would Be A Massive, Piss-Weak Let Down.

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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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We’d be honoured to have John McCain use any of of our songs – like Look At My Stubby Little Arms or Eghhh (EGHHH) – in his election campaign.

But sadly John McCain isn’t having any of it. Instead, he’d rather use My Hero by Foo Fighters which – while probably a better election song that Eghhh (EGHHH) because it doesn’t have a seven-minute death-jazz intermission played on a contraceptive diaphragm – has annoyed Foo Fighters no end.

John McCain’s use of My Hero has enraged Foo Fighters so much that they’ve launched a furious rock n roll riposte – they’ve written a really bloody strongly worded letter about it. In fact, Foo Fighters have really laid the law down – if John McCain plays My Hero one more time, they’re going to call the flipping council about it or something. Just you watch them!

When a person runs for office in America, it’s important that they pick a campaign song. The song helps to set the tone of the campaign, plus it means there isn’t an awkward two-minute period while the politician shuffles to the podium in the middle of the stage in deathly silence. Would Hitler have lost the war if he’d picked something like Ooh Baby I Love Your Way (Every Day) by Big Mountain as his campaign song? Doubtful.

However, one person who’s been having trouble picking a good campaign song is Republican presidential nominee John McCain. Well, actually that’s a lie – John McCain has found loads of brilliant songs for his campaign, but the trouble is the bands who recorded them get super shitty every time he uses them.

So far, both Heart and Jackson Browne have asked John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin to stop playing their songs on the campaign trail, but now John McCain has met his biggest foe yet – Foo Fighters.

You see, because John McCain is such a hero that he basically single-handedly inspired the flashback scenes from Rambo he decided that the only appropriate song to use is My Hero by Foo Fighters. After all, that’s about, um, a heroin addict blowing his chops off with a shotgun, and that’s, um, sort of, um, appropriate?

Anyway, Foo Fighters aren’t taking this lying down – they’ve issued a statement explaining exactly why John McCain using My Hero in the election is jolly well not on. BBC News reports:

The band said in a statement: “The saddest thing about this is that My Hero was written as a celebration of the common man and his extraordinary potential. To have it appropriated without our knowledge and used in a manner that perverts the original sentiment of the lyric just tarnishes the song.”

These poor Republicans can’t catch a break, can they? First everyone from Diddy to Madonna has lined up to bash Sarah Palin, and now Kurt Cobain‘s beardy drummer has decided that he doesn’t like John McCain? No wonder he looks like he’ll lose the election now.

Anyway, the best way for John McCain to steer clear of any more trouble like this is to only use songs by people who haven’t complained about him yet. So, in that respect, we think that leaves McCain with a choice between My Old Man’s A Dustman, I Am Woman Hear Me Roar by Helen Reddy and the theme-tune to The Benny Hill Show.

We know which one we’d pick – all three.

Jerry Seinfeld hasn’t really had to do much since his sitcom finished all those years ago.

Still ranked by many as the ‘funniest thing ever’ and ‘really, really good’ and earning a hell of a lot of money for the people involved in it, Jerry Seinfeld obviously thought he could rest easy.

At least until a movie about a bee came about, which was clearly what he’d been waiting for all his life.

But now it seems the star of the sitcom with the bloke who drops the ‘N’ bomb on stage wants some more money – that has to be the reason, as agreeing to star in adverts for Microsoft isn’t something you do for integrity’s sake.

No, if reports are to be believed, agreeing to star in adverts for Microsoft is something you do for $10 million. The campaign is planned for the Fall (which is still called Autumn over here) and will see Seinfeld starring alongside the big man himself, Bill Gates.

No details have been confirmed beyond that, but we would wager the ads will be along the same vein – or a counter to – the awful, awful, awful Mac vs PC adverts of the other year. You know the ones – ‘oh, I use a computer to be cool, not for actual functionality – I’m a Mac!‘ and the rest of the bullshit they decided to cram down our poor, weak throats.

And lest we forget the British versions of the ads, which ruined the credibility of David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

Though, to be fair, they’ve now decided they’re happy to whore themselves out to any company that wants to sell anything ever, providing their stupid voices in exchange for cold, hard cash that they probably use to fund transport to their next recording studio, where they can then record another shitty advert that no one cares about.

Ahem…

Anyway, the hope is that Seiny-F will be able to slam some kind of ‘credibility’ into the ‘brand’ or some other marketing spiel. Speaking to CBS News, Brian Steinberg, television editor for Ad Age, said:

“Seinfeld does represent sort of a challenge. He’s not Dane Cook. He’s got a more sophisticated everyday take on things. He often comes across as a questioner of conventional wisdom but also can be kind of a crank. It’s a fine line to walk when you’re dealing with a younger person.”

A fine line to walk when dealing with a younger person would involve hitting them with a brick if they wanted to see Dane Cook in anything, ever – surely? Well, maybe not a ‘fine line’ – more ‘the right thing to do’.

Expect to see the credibility-destroying adverts aired towards the end of the year, and expect idiots to then believe that Microsoft are cool. These will be the same people that thought Macs were good, and not actually useless machines invented for particularly idiotic children. As we all know they are.

Plus didn’t Seinfeld have a Mac in his apartment in the show? And, in fact, we’ve just found (thanks to commercial-archive.com) out that Jerry Seinfeld once advertised Macs back in the early 90s. Look.

It’s a favourite word of ours, but still: integrity?

It must be a great feeling to be Beyonce Knowles-Z – a strong, black, female role model for millions around the world.

That is, unless a cosmetics company decide to make you white. Then you kind of fall down on part of that description.

It would seem that the make-up behemoths at L’Oreal may just be the types to force this kind of change on the young diva, with claims being made that Beyonce‘s skin tone has been lightened for a magazine ad. The company dispute these allegations.

You know – ‘whitening’ things up to make them more palatable to the masses. They did it with every other element of black culture – the music, the clothing, the lingo – why not start trying to make black celebrities white too?

Okay, so maybe we’re going a bit overboard with it – but it’s Friday, and hecklerspray has some drinkin’ to get done. It’s maybe not as bad as that.

No, it doesn’t appear to be L’Oreal‘s version of ‘ethnic cleansing’, more the result of a dodgy photo editing job.

The advert in question shows Beyonce after she’s done one of those hair dying things that girls seem to like so much – 100 per cent grey cover and all that. When the advert image of Bouncy is placed next to any other picture of her, it’s clear to see there’s something not quite right

She looks a bit Michael Jacksoned, frankly, with lighter skin and fairer hair. And it’s a bit frightening.

The claims – which began on everyone’s favourite website TMZ – were quick to be refuted by L’Oreal Paris. They said:

“We highly value our relationship with Ms. Knowles. It is categorically untrue that L’Oreal Paris altered Ms. Knowles’ features or skin tone in the campaign for Feria hair color.”

Which is all well and good, and it’s not like us to be disbelieving of a multi-national corporation like this, but… well – just look at the pictures. While it may well be true that the company had no idea they had ‘whitened’ Beyonce, it cannot be denied that she looks a lot more like a white chick than she normally does.

Which conjures up awful, awful, awful imagery of a possible Wayans Brothers sequel. Something surely not out of the question with the re-makery on show in Hollywood today.

If there's one thing that Heather Mills hates – apart from newspapers that obviously can't see how much better she is than everyone else – it's bloody cows and all that manky milk they keep squirting out of their cow-knockers.

Seriously, Heather Mills hates cows' milk so much that yesterday she went to Hyde Park's Speaker's Corner specifically to slag it off. Obviously, Heather Mill's attention-seeking rant was part of her new Viva vegan campaign that says global warming would reverse instantly if you stopped eating lasagne – but luckily Heather has an alternative plan for anyone who'll find it hard to become vegan straight away. Heather Mills wants you to start squirting rats' milk into your lattes from now on. And as devoted Heather Mills fans, that's what we're doing – in the office now we have up to a million rats strapped into Saw-style torture devices that do nothing but drain every last drop of milk from the rats' agonised bodies.

It's what Heather Mills would have wanted.

It's becoming clear to us that Heather Mills has a definite animal hierarchy in her head, and she's not afraid to tell the world which creatures are better than the others. Up until yesterday we had a vague idea of Heather's animal rankings – pigs were top because Heather likes pointing at them, then nude Germans, then mink because Heather likes wearing coats made from them, and then paedophiles, the only animals who mustn't be spoken about unless you're doing an impersonation of a distressed dolphin.

But what this hierarchy lacked was a top animal and a bottom animal. But thanks to Heather Mills' crackpot turn as the voice of vegan organisation Viva in Hyde Park yesterday, that's become perfectly apparent. The bottom animal is the cow, because of its role in global warming. And the top animal is the rat. Because rats sure do make delicious milk. 

Following the release of her disability-mocking Viva adverts, Heather Mills took to Speaker's Corner yesterday to deliver her pro-rat sermon:

"It's mad that we are having cows' milk. Even cows don't drink it after [the age of] one year, but we continue for ever. There are fields and fields of grain just miles from starving children in Africa being shipped to Europe to feed our livestock. There are 25 alternative milks available in health shops and supermarkets. Why do we not drink rats', cats' or dogs' milk?" 

Now, we're no experts, but we think we know why people don't drink rats' milk – and that's because it's fucking rats' milk. But, though we mock, we can completely see Heather's point here – not only are rats smaller than cows, so they take up less room when they're being milked, but their lives are ultimately more worthless than a cow's life, so you can tear the rat-babies straight from the mother-rat's womb and start milking them trapped in tiny boxes until the day they die and nobody will really care. Plus when you're done with them you can fit like 25 of them into a shoebox and throw it in a river.

Obviously, though, if people did start drinking rats' milk, Heather Mills would be the first person banging a drum and wearing anti-rat billboards outside the Rat Milk Advisory Board headquarters yelling about inhumane it all is. But, hey, just because Heather Mills is the sort of person who'd campaign for the ethical treatment of hairdressing equipment if it got her an inch of publicity, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't take this rat-based campaign seriously.

After all, Viva says that livestock produces 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, making it the second-largest source in the world.

True, the largest source comes from all the claggy soybean and tofu farts that vegans constantly pump out of their malnourished arses, but we'll skip over that fact for now.