Poor John Cleese.
It often feels like, come the year 2067, viewers will switch on their televisions (a 742-inch 64K-HD unit thinner than paper, costing just £29 from Space Asda) and be be greeted by the sight of John Cleese's ghost hawking VIPoo or saying This PlayStation 17 Is Dead or something. Death will provide no release from his never-ending alimony obligations.
But it looks like he has a plan to get out of those financial obligations: “make so many godawful commercials that his army of ex-wives get together and put out a joint statement that they can't bear seeing the man behind A Fish Called Wanda demean himself any further”. At least that's what we presume after his latest campaign, for a PPI claims company. We would say it's the biggest disappointment since finally getting to see one of his Video Arts productions whilst on a work togetherness outing only to find out they're not very funny either1, but the bar is pretty low by this point. Poor John Cleese.
[1. Of course, the Video Arts films existed primarily to tell you about compound interest or whatever, and throw in a few gags as an afterthought. Adverts are meant to entertain first, and leave you feeling so happy you dash out for a gallon of Perrier without even realising it.]
"Oh Mark, you gorgeous idiot. Cleese has always done adverts", you tut to yourselves. Yes, we reply, but at least they used to be good. There once was a time when you saw there was a new Cleese advert on and you could safely expect to be entertained for the next thirty seconds. Chris Addison once gave the rationale for his Direct Line adverts that seeing your favourite comedian in an advert was like 'unlocking' a hidden bonus bit of content from your fave comedy series. And he was right (only not about his Direct Line adverts, which were pish). Back in the pre-digital days, getting to see adverts starring Harry Enfield, Fry & Laurie or Peter Cook would be an unexpected nugget of comedy gold in the middle of Ultra Quiz or Paul Squires Esq. Like finding a hitherto undiscovered fudge amongst the green and yellow flotsam that makes up the final third of a tub of Quality Street. Heck, even Victor Lewis-Smith did radio adverts (for Carling Black Label and VW, as it happens), selling stuff was no big shake. And John Cleese's adverts were up there with the best of them.
So remember him this way. Here are six ads from the firmament of classic Cleese.
1. “Squawking Rages” (Talking Pages)
Firstly to an age before the 118 runners stuck on their false moustaches for the first time (and latterly, everyone just looking up phone numbers on their phones), it’s a spot for the Yellow Pages’ Talking Pages service. Need a locksmith in the middle of nowhere? As a retired couple find following a carkey-related mishap following a picnic, that’s a post-picnic pickle nobody relishes. Luckily, their enthusiastic manchild offspring Colin gallops off to the rescue (and to a handily placed phone box) in order to call for help. On his return to the family car, a locksmith – played by Fawlty Towers’ very own chef Terry, no less (aka Brian Hall) - is already performing his particular brand of keyhole surgery.
2. “Shut up, Wogan” (The BBC)
Fifty-eight quid! Nowadays, most of the monthly cost of a Sky package largely packed with adverts, repeats, imports that Netflix rejected and adverts. Back then, it was the annual outlay for the Licence Fee, the shock of which sends a bearded Cleese spiraling into a pub. As Cleese complains about the meagre returns anticipated from his £58, wondering aloud ‘what have the BBC ever given us?’ (see where they’re going with this?) a parade of BBC Faces point out what a damn good deal it was. Michael Horden, David Attenborough, Steve Davis, Moira Stewart, David Dimbleby, Bob Geldof, Ronnie Barker and the mighty Ken Campbell. A pretty clever piece of business all round, not least in giving the audience enough credit to ‘get’ the reference from a film never (at the time) shown on telly and which had been banned from cinemas in several parts of the UK.
3. “What was that shot of a lizard?” (Schweppes Tonic Water)
Schweppes! There’s a product you don’t see advertised on telly any more, eh? A delightfully meta campaign, the first few spots feature an off-camera Cleese bemoaning contractual tussles, the lack of a suitable tagline and the financial impact appearing onscreen might have on his impending divorce settlement (plus ca change, eh?). Then onto the commercial proper, a deliberately daft Diet Coke pisstake featuring a betrunked Cleese cavorting with young lithe beachgoing types on an expensive beach. And that wasn’t the end of it – subsequent spots simply re-edited the beach-bound bits into a Christmas advert (tinsel wrapped around male models, shot of a turkey inserted haphazardly into the film etc), then with an apologetic Cleese voiceover expressing regret that his body had been so sexy nobody noticed what the advert was for. That’s all followed by an arty monochrome pastiche of those oh-so-enigmatic fragrance adverts. Top stuff.
4. “Who needs to be right all the time?” (Compaq)
An American ad campaign this time, with a series of commercials for the IBM-battling business machines on offer from Compaq. A much more mixed bag, with Cleese taking on a variety of ’character’ roles alongside his regular Sardonic Englishman persona. Still, there are spots where John compares the Compaq Portable 2 (with 4.1 megabytes of memory) with a dead fish, where he expresses amazment at a computer being made from 386 chips and 32 bits of a bus and shooting a computer expert in the neck with an arrow, As pointed out in the documentary film Silicon Cowboys (on the rise of Compaq, and thereby only really of interest to especially bloodyminded geeks like us), the Cleese adverts helped Compaq become a major player in Silcon Valley. And even open a factory in Scotland.
5. ROBOCLEESE (Sony Betamax)
There’s something exciting about seeing adverts for obsolete tech. From the ad for the Commodore CD32 where playing Microcosm makes a robot explode (probably at disappointment after discovering FMV doesn’t distract from what a shoddy shoot-em-up it is) to this oddly compelling promotional film announcing the Sony Betamax. And here’s Cleese muscling in on the act, with a series of adverts for that very Sony Betamax range. We could have gone for this one – which pretty much anyone could have done apart from the funny walks bit – but we’ve gone for this slightly disturbing relic instead. A mechanical CleeseoidZX83 (our name for it) tells us how wonderful Sony’s new video recorder is. Not the best advert, admittedly, but the impending obsolescence makes it worth seeing.
6. “Still, I expect there’s some snooker on another channel.” (The SDP)
Speaking of which, here’s a party political broadcast from the SDP. Everything above applies here, too. A snapshot of 1980s politics that certainly sounds reasonable enough – a heartfelt plea from Cleese about the need for Proportional Representation on behalf of Dr David Owen’s party. In it, Cleese mocks the general tedium associated with such broadcasts, but goes on to put forward a pretty reasonable argument in favour of PR, apart from the bit where he whizzes through the Single Transferrable Vote part in a confusing half second. It’s much more interesting than most other PPBs, however. There aren’t any montages of party leaders with shirt sleeves rolled up or anything. Blimey, eh? One thing you can’t deny here, Cleese truly believes in what he’s selling here. Pity that it all went so bedly wrong once Cleese’s party got their wish in 2010, really.
