After the weather – and a tip of the hat from usual sponsor Powergen – we get a promo for none other than the perennial breakfast show of the time, GMTV. It was still going strong at this point in 2006, though over the course of the next four years, it would gradually crumble away until it was eventually replaced by Daybreak, which itself collapsed to pieces not too long afterwards as well. Still, nice to see all that sunny branding again in its prime, which is always how I choose to remember it.
Ads now, and first up is another repeat from the Challenge days, that being Cif Power Cream, which still sounds like a cake with special abilities and not a cleaning product. More car stuff then from Renault, promising that you can get a special offer on every model in their range – except the F1 cars, presumably because the very rich don’t need a special offer to afford one. Sucks to be them, eh?
After another SCS reminder, the ever-lovely Philippa Forrester crops up in her post-Robot Wars days as the face of Lloyds Pharmacy, promoting all the neat little things that you can get or do at your local chemists’, making a trip to buy some paracetamol look like a good day out more than a dull shopping journey. Now give me a turn on the blood pressure monitor!
I would presume most of the people reading this probably have a bed already, but in case yours has gone missing, you might want to pop down to the Dreams sale and get another one. And yet another sale is on down at Right Price Tiles, a shop that I hadn’t heard of before, but when I went to look it up, it seems it only operates in Ireland now, so the sale probably could have bankrupted them everywhere else for all I know.
More sales! The Place for Homes gets its licks in again, followed by an ad for a thankfully different subject: National Express. It’s just a bus company, and of course it’s all about how cheap their prices are, but at least they didn’t use the word “sale”.
Sale! Because B&Q just HAD to remind us again, didn’t they? Mercifully, we’re straight back into the weather after that, sponsored by BMI this time, with that dull little jingle that hasn’t left my head for well over a decade now. But hey, time for a weather update in Wales. It’s raining. Is anyone surprised?
After the weather, though, it’s time for some F1 racing, sponsored by V-Power, which sounds like an old PS1 racing game to me, but I’m sure it’s perfectly adequate fuel for these speedsters. We’ll move on to the next ad break, anyway, where we get a traditionally animated PIF for community policing, which is maybe a little atypical for PIFs of this time, but nice to see regardless.
A man then fondles his Bluetooth headset like it’s some kind of beautiful, exotic woman in an ad for John Smith’s. (I can hear you snickering, but this kind of tech was all the rage at the time, I swear.) And you know what I’m missing right now? A sale. But MFI has one on, so that’s okay. I was worried there for a second.
A reminder to spray your pits with Right Guard comes next, lest you grow up to be a very unhygienic golfer. (Why do we even have armpit hair, anyway? Whose idea was that?) After another Always ad, there’s a TV spot for the Jason Statham movie Crank, which certainly made me cranky the one time I saw it. There are more sale reminders for Homebase and PC World, followed by a surprisingly entertaining car ad in which the new Vauxhall Astra jumps off big ramps and spins around and drives up tunnels like they’re half-pipes, which is pretty cool. (Wow, I’m actually interested by one of these for once.)
That ghastly animated promo for the All-Star Cup returns – I apologize for the nightmares you might have tonight – and then it’s back to the zoom-zoom race-y things.
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