I have to congratulate the advertising executives who dreamt up the latest ad featuring Jamie Oliver. Truly, it is a work of sheer and masterful hilarity. I remember the ‘early years’ Jamie sliding down his banister and throwing ‘bits and bobs’ around the kitchen. Now he has graduated from the school of ‘alright me ol’ mucca what can I do yer for’ to serious campaigner and activist doncha know. Yes, gone is the cheeky chappy, and instead Mr Oliver is fighting childhood obesity, bad parenting and general food-related issues that, according to him, aren’t ‘pukka’.
So, he tackled school dinners and twizzling turkeys. But it doesn’t end there – now he needs to reform the nation’s bad food habits. And how is he doing this? A series of adverts for a leading supermarket. Yeah, because their vegetables flown in from Kenya and washed in chemical solution are so fresh and healthy. So we had Jamie on the road – chucking food around for giddy mums to try. But that wasn’t enough – now his beef is with taste.
Apparently, things that taste good are what the supermarket is all about because things that taste good are pure and healthy and virtuous, and if Jamie says it’s good then it must be. In the latest ads, Jamie is filmed rambling on a hillside, clutching a fork, becoming more and more out of breath. ‘Where is he going?’ I asked myself as I tucked into my TV dinner of kebab and chips. ‘Gosh, he is struggling – is he looking for water or an inhaler perhaps? Or is the fork to catch a pheasant with?’
Nope, he heads straight for the frying pan on a stove in the middle of the field. Of course, that’s what grows in fields! I had always wondered. In the pan sizzling away are a load of juicy-looking sausages. Miraculously ready and waiting for Jamie’s fork to plunge into their meaty goodness and hold up to the camera. Before I have time to blink he has roughly bitten into a sausage and uttered the phrase “Everything [the supermarket] stands for in a bite.” Then some more rambling and banging on about taste and the grand finale – a doe-eyed stare into the middle distance.
Well, I learnt two things from this very informative advert. Firstly, that sausages are actually vehicles for philosophical musings and secondly that sausages are not, as previously thought, manufactured out of noses, ears, eyes, lips, trotters and arseholes in a factory somewhere grim. Nor are they stuffed full of salt, preservatives and all sorts of other little nasties which make them taste unbelievably good. No, they grow in fields! Fantastic. And that is what the supermarket is about: honest, wholesome, good-tasting and natural food. We already know that Jamie Oliver doesn’t advocate processed food like turkey twizzlers. So, in another ad exec’s words, ‘simples’: sausages cannot be processed food. Jamie ‘lovely jubbly’ Oliver can’t possibly be misleading us, because he wants the nation to be healthy and happy.
There you have it – sausages are natural food found in fields somewhere on what looks like the South Downs. I don’t know about you but I reckon I can save a fair packet if, instead of buying sausages, I just go and forage for my own. Read more by Naomi.
