Unsightly Bobbling: ITV (Meridian) adverts, Boxing Day 1994

CHRISTMAS AND THAT. Two uploads today, both from Boxing Day 1994 and some stuff around a festive You've Been Framed, as shown on Meridian. ATTACK OF THE DERANGED MUTANT KILLER MONSTER SNOW GOONS. Or one at least. What I assume is someone's psychotic dad serves up a helpful reminder that You've Been Framed is for pranks and jokes as well as violent domestic incidents, and takes us into the adverts. And as it's Boxing Day, it's SALES! First: at Debenhams, who use that pastoral Briggs-influenced thing which I've uploaded before that they used for a few consecutive years in the mid-1990s. The late Andrew "Valgard" Burt very kindly pinpoints the exact date for us, in case we're already too drunk to be keeping track. Early bird bargains until 10 am! Live it up! Sail on, honey: here's the other inevitable part of inter-Christmas advertising:, holidays. Specifically boating ones in Britain and France. Unfortunately I don't know the French for windlass. You'll take to it like a duck to orange sauce. I actually quite like the abstract idea of a boating holiday, but then I like the idea of an unmoored holiday where you just sort of wander about wherever you end up. I think it's a race memory from my distant Romanichal ancestors. As if to alternate, here's another sale! This time it's at B&Q, who are in the middle of rebranding (the old logo is symbolically hidden at the end) and have hired a bellowing and probably drunk Michael Elphick as a spokesman. Next, the pattern is broken as we get an advert a practical household item. Hugh Dennis is sceptical about this Fido Dido ripoff sweatshirt's claims of being safe to wash without causing desaturation or bobbling. But fortunately it really is possible with the miracle of Dreft, truly the softest-named of the detergents. Non-Fido approves. There was a clothing line in the mid-90s that was briefly ubiquitous where I lived, with a logo consisting of another spike-haired erzatz Fido Dido and a name like "Dorigo" or something (not Dorigo, obviously, but something similar). On the sort of Naffco54/Le Shark end of the fashion spectrum. Every other kid was wearing a T or sweatshirt with that damn logo on it at one point, and then it vanished, and now I can't remember what it was or find any evidence it existed on the Internet. It may not have spread past Plymouth. Then, a disturbing surrealist tableau for Nicotinell. There was a flurry of adverts for this sort of thing in the first half of the 90s, because the Nicotine Patch had just been invented and made available (over the counter, naturally). Most of them were more straightforward than this nightmarish human clock scenario. I don't like that the guy looks at me and then looks away. It gives me Five Doctors vibes. Next: a car advert without a car. It's Volvo, so they're bragging about how stultifyingly safe their car is, what with its rollcages and new side-impact airbags. You couldn't die in one of these if you tried (please do not try). The car in question is the sexily named 850, but they keep that in the small print. ANOTHER SALE. This time it's at MFI, one of the first high-street casualties of the modern day shopping model of either ordering online or going to gigantic motherships on the outskirts of town. You might could get a whole bedroom for 200 quid. Jeff Rawle thinks that's quite cheap. I don't know. For some reason no sign of the three-slats MFI logo. We are then returned to You've Been Framed to watch someone accidentally fall over a bit at a wedding. Probably.