There’s no video content for this week’s Badvertising, primarily because caretaker of the advertising corner, Michael Park, has become the victim of legal action after a woman’s head exploded after seeing his smug, self-involved face on her computer screen more than the appointed twice in a month. This means that it’s back to plain ol’ words!

When you’re making an advert, it’s important to establish a relationship for the sake of the viewer. Now, what do we mean by that? There are myriad different types of relationships in advertising from the authoritarian ‘expert’ who spends a worrying amount of time bellowing out of the television, to the ‘friends’ who love nothing more than snuggling up on a couch eating Maltesers and taking intravenous injections of air freshener.

There are antagonistic husband and wife duos as well as the brother/sister combo and occasionally you get to see a couple of children sitting around being accosted by a rip-off mouse. It’s just how advertising is. Relationships are usually established pretty damned quickly.

Except here…

Who is this woman? Aside from being someone who breaks into people’s houses and demands cups of tea while speaking like Margaret Thatcher after she was forced to chain-watch all six seasons of Sex In The City, she appears to be an apparition who believes solely in the spread of bingo.

Perhaps she belongs to the Church Of Jesus Christ & The Latter Day Tweak of the Thumb. Who knows. She could be the Queen Bee or the Dancing Queen. She’s definitely not one of the Two Fat Ladies. There we go, we’ve got rid of all the woeful bingo puns in one paragraph that you could have ignored if we’d had the good grace to warn you beforehand.

Once this mad bat has cracked her laptop out, she begins indoctrinating her shocked victim into the ways of bingo until the poor, bemused fool is too broken to even question this woman’s presence in her kitchen. There she was getting on with a spot of ironing and the next thing she knows, some vampiric whore who has just eaten a live chicken to sustain her blood lust is hovering over her talking about her father liked to engage in orgies.

Everything happens so fast, even the audience is left completely unaware of who this woman is. One thing’s for sure, she must have an endless supply of laptops if she’s not even bothering to take it with her. Do vampires have a lot of money? That’s a thought for the Hallowe’en special…

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Hey you! We assume you’re straight! Why? That’s because we’re the product of a society steeped in the preposterous hocus of religion and, as well you know, religion don’t like the gays. Why? Because they make more money out of straight couples with their christenings and such.

Idiots. As such, when someone says “I’m not straight”, the world goes into meltdown! How can someone be Not Straight?! What would God think?

Mercifully, god doesn’t exist, which means, all you bozos leading a life of solely staring at the opposite sex are missing out on all the fun that actress Evan Rachel Wood has just revealed she can have. That’s because she’s bisexual, which means she can have sex with absolutely anyone she pleases, provided they’re of legal age and not asleep.

That’s right kiddies! The star of The Wrestler, who previously stepped-out with panto rock villain Marilyn Manson, said that she’s quite happy to have sex with women or men.

Asked about this, she chirruped:

“Yes! I’m into anything… meet a nice guy, meet a nice girl…”

Seeing as she’s attractive and wealthy, she might *GASP* have both at the same time! People do that y’know! They do. It isn’t all stifled yawns, gently rocking into each others pubis regions and hoping that no-one hears you through the walls. Some people actually have a really fun time with whomever they fancy enough to derobe in front of.

Wood announced this non-news on the back of her True Blood co-star, Anna Paquin, who said she was bisexual.

So there you have it.

Some people aren’t straight. Isn’t that astonishing? Leave the clergy to tut and wag fingers while they repeatedly get caught with their trousers down around young children or help grease the gears of war.

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Never mind all this tweeny-Twilight bollocks, True Blood is the occult for grown-ups.

Being a fan (or should that be fang?) of all things vampire, True Blood was always going to be up my dark alley, but even I was surprised by how much I enjoyed season two. The vamps got better looking, there were zombies, much less Sookie, and best of all – we got to take the piss out of Christians.

Thanks to the DVD, I even managed an end-of-season-four-episodes-in-a-night fest, which was the best evening’s entertainment I’ve had in a long time. But then I am married and in my late 30s.
Season highlights for me: Eric Northman. He’s a Viking type and he’s a man. Do you see what they did with his name? Clever, eh?

Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) is where it’s at in vampire terms. He suits the, er, dead look. Is sexier than Bill (not difficult) and is an out-and-out psychopath. His only weakness is a bizarre fixation with the tombstone-toothed Sookie.

Anyway, Eric’s worried about his maker Godric, who seems to have disappeared. Though, frankly, the man is two thousand years old. And dead already. Still, Godric is an extremely good character, brilliantly played by Allan Hyde and his eventual sign-off is a truly beautiful piece of film.

Sookie and Bill (Stephen Moyer) go to Dallas to help find Godric, while back at home things have taken a joyfully bonkers turn. Maryann (Michelle Forbes), her of the floaty dresses, descends on Bon Temps with the ravishing Egg (Mehcad Brooks), a fixation with Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) and maintains her hold over Tara (Rutina Wesley).

Next thing you know there’s people having sex all over the place, the optician sells out of comedy contact lenses and the bodies are soon piling up.

While the aforementioned born-agains find cunning ways to meet their maker earlier than expected down in Texas, in Louisiana everything is building up to quite a climax. As the episodes ticked down, I realised I was mentally rubbing my hands with glee waiting for the finale. And oh, didn’t they do well? I swear, I smiled the whole way through.

Forget the other vamp wannabes, True Blood is TV with a bit more bite.

Or at least for women knocking 40 who should have better things to do on a Thursday night than spend four hours lusting after dead men.

[review by Anna Smurthwaite]

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What is it about the Deep South of America that scares the crap out of me?

If ever I was to rank all the places in the world according to where I would like to go before I die, it would probably appear below warzones Afghanistan and Burma. It’s still above France though.

It’s ridiculous, I know, but I’m British. My only knowledge of the area comes from appalling horror movies and one heavily-edited episode of Top Gear. But there is something about the place which really freaks me out.

For some reason I have this idea in my head that every shop I go in will be festooned with dead animals and that a toothless old man in a rocking chair will darkly greet me with the words “We don’t get many strangers round ’ere”.

There is no way I would last. I am a city boy, with no religious or racial prejudices to boast of. I would be hung as ‘a dievil’ quicker than you can say Rosco P. Coltrane.

The release of the first season of True Blood has done nothing to ease my fears. In fact, rather than stop me worrying about tales of sodomy and superstition, I have now added vampires, telepathic virgins, man-dogs and girls named Sookie (really) to my list of reasons not to go.

What makes it worse, is that in True Blood world, vampires are accepted after ‘coming out of the coffin’, thanks largely to a new drink called Tru Blood, which uses synthetic blood.

They own nightclubs, have their own fan clubs (fang bangers – girls who let vampires bite them) and even campaign for equal rights on late night TV shows.

Sure, it’s supposed to be fiction, but sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, right? I am sure life in Bon Temps, where the series is shot, is all bonnets and butterflies, but it’s so far removed from my own world I have no idea what to expect.

The closest I have ever been to the Deep South is Disneyland. For all I know, True Blood is an accurate snapshot of Louisiana life.

Thank you Hollywood and TV Land for turning me into an idiot.

But is True Blood any good? Well, after being showered with praise and awards since it first aired on HBO on September 2, 2008, it certainly has a lot of fans.

Based on the The Southern Vampire Mysteries novels by Charlaine Harris, it centres on telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), who risks the wrath of the good townspeople of Bon Temps when she falls in love with dirty, blood-sucking vampire Bill Compton, played by British actor Stephen Moyer. To add more bite, there is someone going around killing anybody who associates with vampires.

What you get is a pretty good TV series, which brushes on themes such as religious hypocrisy, minority rights and sexual fantasies thicker than a dub of black molasses.

The two main characters, to be honest, are the worst thing in it. Paquin is a fantastic actress and at least while pretending to listen to people’s thoughts does not follow Greg Grunberg’s method of cocking his head like a confused dog.

But Sookie, a waitress at Bon Temps bar Merlotte’s, is essentially an annoying character – from her toothy grin to her sullied goody two shoes.

Moyer is even worse and capable of just two expressions: one when he shows his fangs and the other when tries to look mean and moody but just looks like a man who feels guilty about farting in a lift of strangers.

In fact, the only thing interesting about his character is he’s, well, a vampire and he’s 173 years old, which admittedly is quite interesting.

The only thing interesting about Sookie is she has sex with a 173-year-old dead man. Which, technically, makes her a right weirdo.

But the real genius of True Blood is the supporting cast members, particularly three characters. First, there’s Sookie’s dim-witted older brother Jason, played brilliantly by Aussie actor Ryan Kwanten, who is not only addicted to vampire blood (the latest drug on the street) but would also stick his dick in a bag of soot.

Then there’s Sookie’s best mate, the tempestuous Tara, and, best of all, her cousin, Lafayette, who is not only a cook but also the town’s drug dealer and rent boy.

They all serve to add a bit more bite to a largely uninteresting main plot.

Thank God then for more than the occasional sex scene to keep you keen – just not keen enough to go yourself.

True Blood: Season One is released on DVD on Monday

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In the build up to the launch of vampire drama True Blood on Channel 4, hecklerspray’s Keith Emmerson caught up with the defiantly charming and ruggedly handsome Stephen Moyer (who plays Bill Compton) to discover the man behind the vampire.

We are also reassuringly told that he could kill Robert Pattinson if he had to. If you didn’t catch the first episode on Channel 4, it’s available on 4OD – watch it.

Video after the jump!

True Blood, Wednesdays, 10pm on Channel 4. For more information, please click here.

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Hello, and welcome to another edition of Things About Vampires That Clearly Stomp All Over Twilight.

So far this week we’ve shown you a trailer for True Blood, which is what Twilight would be like if all the vampires weren’t such godawful namby-pambies, and now here’s the trailer for Blood: The Last Vampire, which is what Twilight would be like if all the vampires were kickass Asian schoolgirl kung-fu ninjas.

And if the phrase ‘kickass Asian schoolgirl kung-fu ninjas’ gets you as giddy as it does us, you really have to watch the Blood: The Last Vampire trailer after the jump. It’s epic…

If you’ve seen Twilight, you’ll know that vampires are scrawny and sensitive and have big sad puppy eyes and are about as dangerous as a cotton wool statue of a kitten.

But judging by this new trailer for the forthcoming series of True Blood, that’s all a lot of rubbish. If this trailer is any indication, True Blood is a vampire show full of boobs, bottoms, bikinis, sexy dancing, orgasms, pelvic grinding, spanking, face-licking, nudity, masturbation, bestiality and enough sex scenes to literally turn you blind. In that order.

Honestly, it’s quite a trailer. It’s after the jump…

Oh bad luck, Westboro Baptist Church. It’s fangs that God hates. Fangs. You were one letter out! So close! How silly must you feel?

For proof, see the video after the jump. God definitely hates fangs – if he didn’t then why would He allow so many people to bung up banners all across London? No answer? Exactly.

Now, rumour has it that this is all just a ploy to remind people about the imminent British arrival of TV show True Blood – a sort of Twilight that grown-ups and the mentally-capable can enjoy – but we’re not so sure. See for yourself…