Have you noticed the adverts on the telly for settees and sofas?
Actually, forget that. If you’ve switched the telly on at any time in the last 10 years that’s all that you will have seen.
Most TV advertising falls into several categories. First off come the ones you don’t understand and this lot have a subcategory in which the product is being drooled over by a famous celebrity you don’t know.
The next category is the boring, then the ones that get up your nose, and so on.
There will be about five minutes of advertising for every 10 minutes of programme.
I often wonder just how impressionable the general public really is.
Just think about the big three.
Double glazing and conservatories, new kitchens and what we used to call three piece suites.
They are always being offered for half the normal price and that your opportunity to secure one of these fabulous bargains must end on Saturday. Every Saturday!
Advertising is so huge these days the advertising business in itself must contribute as much to the gross national product as does the manufacture and sale of the goods they want us to buy.
But it’s the sale of the advertising slots that pays for the programmes we watch.
But I remember the old days. When you came down the road from Pully and went past the power station,and up and over the old railway bridge there used to be a halt sign where the Peel Road traffic lights are now. And on the opposite side of the road, next to the filling station, there used to be a row of shops.
One of these was a cycle shop belonging to Bill Carberry. Bill was a cheerful sort of bloke who had a slight structural defect called a club foot.
It is only folk of a certain age who will have heard the name, club foot. The condition was corrected by a specially built up boot or shoe and was common enough not to be curious. I haven’t seen one for years so presume that the problem is now fixable.
Another business was Stan Clarke’s grocery shop. But interesting as this may be, none of it has anything to do with advertising. So to continue.
Just to the right of these shops on the Douglas side there was a section of plain wall The Palace and Derby Castle Company, who operated the Douglas cinemas, used to advertise big screen attractions. The one memory that has never left me was the slogan: ‘Don’t take your wife for granted, take her to the pictures.’
Timewise, I’m talking about the 1950s, long years before the advertising we know today, began. It’s hard to believe but visual advertising was simply large sheets of paper, hand painted with the message of the day, and stuck onto wooden hoardings or cement walls with wallpaper paste.
Now when you think about it, to have the required visual impact, these posters had to be very large and very high off the ground.
In Douglas, next to what was once Scott’s Bistro, and in the block that is now HSBC, there was a poster maker and sign writers called Chillcott’s.
One of their employees was this absolute hero called Victor Lyon. Victor would set out with a long extension ladder, a bucket of wallpaper paste, a satchel hung round his neck and a long handled brush.
His ladder had about four sections linked by a rope and pulleys so when the rope was pulled the ladder extended evenly. Some of the poster sites were really high and Victor would start at the top. His posters were in sections, folded and in order in his satchel.
To see this man 30ft up a ladder painting a section of a paper sign about 4ft x 6ft with paste from his bucket and his long handled brush was fairly interesting. To see the picture grow as he joined up the next pieces was miraculous.
I could watch his style of advertising on telly, any time. He could do a series on health and safety.