Am I the first to spot Jim Haynes’s television adverts for After Eight dinner mints?

The founding father of the fringe in Britain, and the Traverse in Edinburgh, is seen mingling with his guests at one of his famous bohemian Paris soirees when, with hilarious incongruity, the little square sweets in brown paper bags are passed round.

It’s as though a royal banquet at Buckingham Palace had ended with a lucky dip of fruit lollies and mini Mars bars.

In Jim’s case, you really can say he’s doing these ads for the money.

He’s endured a series of financially crippling property crises in Paris, been done out of his home and atelier by unscrupulopus landlords and is only managing to hang on by the skin of his teeth. And his health hasn’t been brilliant, either.

So if plugging those ghastly peppermint goo satchels helps him out of a hole, who could blame him?

But, generally speaking, performers seem to have lost all sense of moral decorum about doing voice-overs. Michael Gambon will do anything that comes his way which does, I think, diminish his credibility as a great actor of our day.

Does he really believe that we are impressed by the fact that he’s plugging a financial corporation? Does Simon Callow’s espousal of Audi motor cars make you want to rush out and change your brand?

In the case of those highly irritating ads for Direct Line insurance by Paul Merton and Stephen Fry you wonder: why? The scripts are no good, they both sound horribly pleased with themsleves, and they surely don’t need the money.
  
But the ads are admittedly effective. So effective, in fact, that  I switched my home insurance to another firm immediately.

The shameless Michael Winner ads are a bit different. Personally, I like the old rogue, but as I have no high expectations of him as an artist or writer any more, nothing he does on television offends me.

And his acting and evident pleasure in his own personality is so hilarious, I rather look forward to seeing him in short bursts.
 
The Jim Haynes ads are very well shot, by the way. You rarely see the hubbub of an informal dinner party captured so vividly in everyday television drama. And all Jim’s guests, as they always are, look interesting and atttractive.

It seems an age since Peter Hall was critically red-carpeted for doing his “Very Peter Hall, very Sanderson’s” curtains advertisements at the height of his television fame on Aquarius.

It’s high time some of our new star directors took up the challenge of high profile, low credibility commercial enterprise.

Rupert Goold, for instance, would be the perfect man to shake his locks in the latest hair gloss sheen product (perhaps in a which twin has the Tony contest with Greg Doran). And charming colleen Josie Rourke at the Bush would be the ideal new face for skin creams and glamour products: smooth over that sharp cutting edge with the latest nutritious lactation.

And what about a resume showcase of all great actors’ and directors’ adverts at next year’s Edinburth Festival? Obviously it has to be staged at the Traverse, with Jim Haynes passing the hat round and serving the sweeties afterwards.
   

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 9:59 am and is filed under Michael Coveney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.