Storm Noddy

I'm strangely attracted to biased news and infantile adverts, probably because they and their subject matter easily confirm my misanthropic world view. The millionaire newsreaders with the reading age of an eleven year old in 1968, the looney bug eyed sports presenters on a different planet, and the squealing snake oil voice overs on cartoon adverts. All of this, I love and hate.

Minority digital channels offer a worthy alternative, yet the endless adverts showing cheery people discussing their forthcoming funeral arrangements, newsreels from around the hideous world of suffering and the inflationary spiral of charity requests, tends to reduce the appeal.

Which reminds me of a superb example over Christmas...

I was rather taken aback when a young lady perched on a lavatory began to demonstrate the efficiency of her panty liners, but I was absolutely stunned when this was immediately followed (no pause at all) by another advert showing two crumpets covered in Marmite. The net effect was mesmerising, and decidedly unwanted.

Even so, there was still a good episode of 'Snotman Rules Okay?' to break up the monotony. In an international campaign to rid the earth of vile pernicious viruses, he invented a super vaccine which he sprayed around the planet at the speed of light, using what appeared to be an old 'Impulse' deodorant canister. This was entirely successful and the closing scene sees him wandering through a deserted city, no longer afflicted by humankind.

The ultimate virus was extinguished!

Snotman then renamed himself 'Al' and retired to a community of old Sinclair computers in the West Indies. 

In the real world, I went out later to watch the alchemists.

These are the grand old ladies of the teashop who have miraculously turned vases of ashes into twenty years of exuberant gossip, untrammeled by the concerns of finance. On this occasion, however, there was one isolated old man standing in the centre, honking like a goose. He was presumably Brad in the undoubted Pit.

A one eyed man in the land of the blind?

Or the reverse?