Proud among ITV’s arrangements for the Jubilee was a pageant of old commercials with footballers in them. Magnificent sight. For a whole hour the screen was awash with a heaving flotilla of the football-based campaigns of yore — a scene reminiscent of Canaletto, had the great Venetian been alive to paint in the age of Pizza Hut.
Here was Eric Cantona, barrel-chested and ruthless on Hackney Marshes. Here was Wayne Rooney sticking his bearded head out of a caravan. Here was Ryan Giggs flogging daffs to motorists because he bought the wrong boots. And here were a handful of other players who somehow made it into commercials despite the seemingly insuperable barrier of not playing for Manchester United. (Missing a penalty in a shoot-out for England has been a widely approved method of clawing your way up in those circumstances.) Indeed, all the phases of British history were represented, at least as far back as the Sixties, when Bobby Moore and Martin Peters, smartly suited and in black and white, entered a pub and rather patronisingly interrupted their wives’ darts match to advertise ... well, pubs. (It was altogether a simpler era.) Every clip, though, was a richly shimmering social document in its way. How the Queen must have enjoyed watching them float past.
The pageant was called The Greatest Footie Ads Ever and its host was Paddy McGuinness. The Queen would have been expecting no one else after his efforts, little more than a week ago, in neutering the threat of Will Ferrell and securing the Soccer Aid title for England in the annual charity face-off at Old Trafford. Even Her Majesty would have winced at the title, though. In polite society, use of the word “footie” is no more acceptable than use of the word “soccer”. It’s surprising that McGuinness — a genuine “football man”, as opposed to a “footie man” — didn’t fight this imposition with all the power available to him.
Of course, to criticise an event like this, rather than simply enter into the celebratory spirit of it, is to risk looking sullen and ungrateful. Yet one wonders gently whether the show couldn’t have been a little more analytical. Graham Taylor briefly appeared, but only to reprise his “do I not like that” catchphrase, rather than to shed important light on the creation of the seminal Sony “Retirement Home” advertisement.
Enlightenment came from the pageant’s only other guest, Peter Reid. As a veteran of the Carlsberg “Pub Team” campaign (very much The Godfather: Part II of the football commercial genre), Reid was in a position to tell us that the moment when Stuart Pearce’s phone rings during Sir Bobby Robson’s team talk was genuine and unscripted. For fans of the genre, this was like being awoken to the sloppy and possibly even deliberately undermining nature of John Lennon’s playing on The Long and Winding Road.
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Really, can a “making of” DVD be far behind?
Otherwise, though, and unusually, McGuinness’s show proceeded entirely without talking heads. This was a) cheaper, presumably and b) a bit of a relief, in fact. No Radio 1 DJ remembering exactly where she was the first time she saw Peter Kay boot that ball into the neighbouring gardens. (Answer: in front of the telly.) No Professor Ellis Cashmore explaining patiently the nexus of global social and economic forces that have left David Beckham in a position to sell underpants.
Yet a bit of critical analysis might not have gone amiss, particularly if someone could have been found who was ready, amid the glad hurrahs, to put the counter-revolutionary proposition that advertising’s relationship with football is unhelpful, possibly infantilising and, maybe, even in need of dissolution.
It would not be difficult, after all, to find advertising guilty of the creation of expectations that the poor, bare game cannot hope to live up to; by which, indeed, football itself is cruelly diminished. Once you have seen the Brazil squad dribble like liquid through an airport, the likelihood of actual football striking you as in any way detaining, in and of itself, is rendered ruinously slight.
Furthermore, a generation has come of age to whom it is a source of immense disappointment that, in real football, the ball at no point explodes into flames; that the turf can at no moment be cajoled into opening up and revealing canyons below; that the sound of footballers scampering across turf in no way resembles the noise made by stampeding buffalo.
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And consider the strain on the other side of the camera. In the past, if Brian Clough wanted to plug the service offered by East Midlands Electricity, all he had to do was step into a showroom and stand there smiling next to a couple of sales reps. These days he would have to be five hours in make-up and jump over a thrashing alligator. Did things get better? It depends how you look at it.
Still, at least it didn’t rain.