The Advert Calendar

Regular readers of The Advert Calendar will know that Christmas Eve is, in most years, given over to the wussiness I feel for our feline friends.

And I make no apologies for once again bringing out this sublime 30 seconds. The delicate arrangement of We Wish You A Merry Christmas, the pop of the cork and the rustling of the stockings...and then the purring that accompanies the cat's stocking filler of a festive turkey dinner. Just lovely.

Properly feeling Christmassy now, so what say we crack open the Old England and have a quick sherry?

No, not When Santa Got Stuck Up the Chimney - I mean JS Bach's cast-iron floor filler Air on the G String, as arranged by Jacques Loussier and his trio! Have you got a light, boy...?

..oh, yes, it is - it's Charlie Drake, starring in the panto back in the 1970s. And listen out for who's "behind you", Charlie, with a cool glass of Heineken! "Stop messin' abaht" indeed!

So regular readers of The Advert Calendar will have seen this one, but what's Christmas without one or two repeats?

Anyway, this one'll keep you going till The Ooh Aah Bird rolls around again, on Christmas Eve at 9:40pm on BBC Four...

Chanel's mini epics - typically shown around this time of year - are always a bit strange (I'm looking at you, flavour-of-the-month Timotei "Bleu" Chaletmaid), but never less than stylish.

I do think it's a shame though that we haven't seen this lovely Audrey Tautou-starrer for...a couple of years now? Look at the pair of them, they're having lots of fun on da moon!

Some more archive trailerage today.

Ah, Channel 4 - they didn't always just give up in the period between Christmas and New Year and fling out back-to-back episodes of The Simpsons and Come Dine With Me, you know. Oh, no - back in the day we got such eclectic fare as, er... On, second thoughts, I wonder what they're up to in Springfield?

(Friday 29th December 1989, since you ask.)

The '80s Oxo family, headed by Michael Redfern and Lynda Bellingham. This one was repeated on Christmas night in 2014 as a tribute to Lynda.

Nicholas Lyndhurst giving it the full Back to the Future: Part II in this '90s throwback from WHSmith (note - not TGJones!) Check out those lovely VHS tapes...

(Bet they don't have any issues with Bountys...)

From 2013, one of John Lewis's best.

Technically the hare has of course disrupted the bear's hibernation cycle, although according to ChatGPT "The advert isn’t trying to be a biological documentary — it’s a whimsical, anthropomorphised story that uses hibernation as a narrative device about friendship and gift-giving." Well, excuse me.

..and see where it gets you.

Bit of an oddity today. Back in the '80s the Spanish national public broadcaster TVE decided to air a "public information film", effectively warning children against watching too much TV - lest, er...your dog left you.

The dog was played by Pippin, celebrated canine star of the kids' show Come Outside and the Bakers Complete ads.

Getting back on topic, Pippin later returned to tug on our heartstrings in a Christmas sequel:

..here's a flavour of what you might have caught on the box on Christmas Day in 1980 if you couldn't move for Christmas pudding-induced inertia. Get on down with K-Tel, enjoy a pint of Guinness and book your tickets for Smokey and the Bandit 2!

Comic takes on Cointreau from Carrott's Lib:

And the late Stanley Baxter:

1981 saw a sequel to the Cointreau ad of the Seventies, and a return for the smooth-talking Christian who continued to woo Catherine...

Facts Amazing: Because Jennifer Clulow (Catherine) worked as a continuity announcer on TVS, this ad couldn't be shown on ITV in that area, only on Channel 4. Sacre bleu!

A festive slice of BBC2 from Christmas Eve 1985, with a quick blast of Hinge and Bracket.