Nibble Nobby’s Nuts adverts

ITV, Channel 4 and the rest

I love TV advertisements. To me, they are like the starters in a Cantonese restaurant – often superior to the main course. The tasty bite-sized pieces of audio-visual candyfloss are spun so elegantly and go down so easily you almost feel let down when the programme starts again. Particularly if you’re watching Carnivale or some shit.

"Like a doting sink estate mother with her brood of scrotes I overlook their faults to find that one little chink of good in their armour of turd."

I want to like TV adverts. If there’s a single reason to like one, I’ll find it. Like a doting sink estate mother with her brood of scrotes I overlook their faults to find that one little chink of good in their armour of turd.

Yet every now and then there comes an advert which really is beyond redemption. One so bad it makes your eyes bleed and makes you feel like your spinal cord has been pulled through one of your nostrils in one yank. One such commercial is the advert for Nibble Nobby’s Nuts featuring Slade frontman Noddy Holder.

“There’s a sense of there being less space between Noddy’s genitals and the camera than anyone else’s.”

It features three yam-yam dopes walking past a billboard that says "Nibble Nobby’s Nuts". Remember that because it’s going to become important in, ooh, three seconds or so. The three walk into a pub and spot Noddy Holder wearing his trademark sideburns and tight trousers. If you know what’s coming next you can’t help but notice there’s a sense of there being less space between Noddy’s genitals and the camera than anyone else’s.

Our three heroes, the "Nibble Nobby’s Nuts" billboard fresh in their mind (remember I told you that would be important?), spontaneously charge towards Noddy apparently focused on his ancient bozack. To nibble his nuts! Do you see what they’ve done there? No? Not to worry, Mr Holder will help you out.

"Not NODDY’S nuts! NOBBY’S nuts! Can’t you people read? Nibble NOBBY’S Nuts!"

"Once the mistake is made they clearly have no option but to mouthrape the glam-rock grandfather as he sits reading The Express and Star."

Ha! That’s fantastic. They thought the advert was encouraging them to juggle Noddy Holder’s male menopause enlarged testes in their collective mouth. NOBBY’S not NODDY’S! Did you get that?

Well, it’s certainly an easy mistake to make! And of course once the mistake is made they clearly have no option but to mouthrape the glam-rock grandfather as he sits reading The Express and Star.

I know this atrocity is intended as a "joke" but all jokes have an internal logic once the set-up is established. We know that gorillas don’t walk into bars and order a pint (unless The Mitchell Brothers are back in EastEnders) but once they do it’s conceivable and funny that the bartender would try and overcharge them, make small talk and get a sassy remark back from the gorilla ("at £10 a pint, I’m not fucking surprised…")

“We have to take on board that there are groups of men who… will perform group oral sex on a 60 year-old former pop star.”

For this advert to work we have to take on board that there are groups of men who, upon misreading a billboard advertisement, will perform group oral sex on a 60 year-old former pop star. Outside the fevered imaginings of Jonathan King, this is not happening. Not only is it not happening but there is no universe in which it could ever happen.

The colossal stupidity of this gambit from the ad agency cannot be underestimated. Nobody has eaten a single Nobby Nut since this advert was first aired. There has been a nationwide boycott. They can’t give this shit away. Nonetheless, they are persisting with this campaign for Nobby’s Crisps – with rape survivor Noddy in a lecture hall teaching his tormentors what a thick crisp is. Oh happy day.

Apart from anything else, I don’t think I want our children being exposed to such crude single entendre which involves the type of imagery David Cronenberg would consider a little too hardcore.

Adverts like this debase the serenity of those precious three minutes at half-time which I love so much. They infect everything with their crude, lazy, insulting drivel. Adverts are 30 second tableaux of what we are and what we aspire to. If this type of stuff is allowed to flourish then, seriously, we are falling down the food chain quicker than a 9/11 jumper.