Go compare moonpigs via Halifax, we'll buy any car dot com

If, like me, you happen to agree with Bill Hicks on the subject of marketing then you can't have helped being driven to distraction recently by the fucking dire adverts on the tv. Every vile out-of-work cunt actor or singer seems to have been combined with every gaudy visual or stupid fucking song to sell some cunt product that no cunt wants to fucking buy. I'm not alone either, a particular advert made a friend of mine spout out on Twitter recently, "This [advert] makes me want to self-harm."

Go Compare probably deserve a dishonourable mention here for one of the most annoying audio tracks to any advert ever - indeed, adverts aside it may be the most annoying sound ever recorded outside a South African Football stadium or U2's music studio. We Buy Any Car also deserve a mention for their up-tempo and frankly fucking awful piece of repetitive techno for their ads. No-doubt there's a Belgian Hardcore version of this track being played on a loop in some of the more dubious Hamburg torture bars.

Though there are many awful adverts about, it's my intention in this piece to focus on one of them: the new Halifax adverts. These are the adverts that caused my friend to threaten to self-harm and I share an intense loathing for them that goes beyond mere homicidal hatred.

In the old days (remember 2009, kids?) we had Howard, the highly bespectacled black bank functionary who we are meant to believe was plucked from obscurity to become an all-singing and mainly-dancing poster boy for Halifax bank, building society or whatever it is. Quite why we needed a poor vaudeville act to sell us banking facilities and mortgages is beyond the scope of this article. But Howard was fun, he was bouncy and he had a remarkably funny face. Label as inoffensive and move on.

Now we have something more terrible, something that makes me cringe inside as I watch and listen, wishing the torture would end or at least I could reach the remote. And the question I have to ask is why? There is nothing outwardly offensive about these adverts. Yet each time they're played a little bit of humanity dies. There is very little offensive sound, the visuals are tame and the people are all the type of well-scrubbed smiling folk you'd be honoured to introduce to your mother.

I think there have probably been more but the three adverts in this series I clearly remember are as follows. All seem to be based in some kind of fucking awful commercial radio station of the type I'd not be caught dead listening to. This radio station advertises nothing but various products the bank supplies.

1. The 5 Quid advert - various cunts try to get a word in edgeways whilst the useless fat unfunny hyper-cunt who runs the breakfast show (who could this possibly be?) breaks in to repeatedly tell us that Halifax will give you five quid for some reason I can't recall.
   
2. The ISA advert - some bloke who looks a lot like Russell Howard tries to talk about the benefits of a Halifax ISA while some odd looking tart with big eyes plays Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" over the top (clever huh?)
3. No idea what this is for, The Coffee Cup advert - two birds presenting the show talk about some shit so vapid I have no memory of it and at the end the handle off one of the slag's cup falls off.

So I had a think, cup of tea, bit of spliff and that and tried to analyse what I found so offensive about this particular series of adverts. It aint the product they're selling. It's not the sets, or the music, or even the inclusion of Vanilla Ice. It's not the actors, mainly 20-somethings you'd imagine having degrees and cosy mortgages from their own employer. They just sit and chat in their sensible pastel tops about nothing really.

Then it hit me. The reason these adverts reach a new depth of low for me is the very fact that they are so fucking terribly astoundingly dull and fucking inoffensive. Nothing troubles the eye or ear, indeed nothing troubles the mind. Horrible bland cunts just jabber on about nothing; an achingly appropriate metaphor for the paucity of their lives. And they themselves may well be nothing but a mirror image of our society.

I know one thing's for sure: I won't be a Halifax customer any time soon. Unless they up that free fiver to a tenner.