Poor Asda must have thought they were scraping the barrel of unconvincing celebrity endorsements with their roll call of everymen to be fake staff members. While Paul Whitehouse would arse about with a little truck of Findus Crispy Pancakes and Alphabites, the real staff looked on in a mix of awkward awe and nervousness that their boss would come and yell at them for not working hard enough. Ian Wright broke several basic health and safety rules in the fish department (I used to do that same job, you get told off if you yell at customers). Victoria Wood, the patron saint of northern homeliness, did a lovely job in the bakery – but was obviously working at about a third of the required supermarket speed.
So you can’t blame Asda for deciding to park up their army of celebs (I like to imagine them being wheeled into a little trolley shelter) and go back to their old standard of price cuts. Visually, they’re nifty little ads – the lowest prices of its competitors are shown on screen, before being thumped out of view by the sheer scale of Asda’s. Fair enough, seeing as the supermarket is never going to be able to take the food porn tack that most others go for (although god bless Iceland for thinking they could give it a shot).
What’s confusing is the music. There’s a trumpet going in a real knees-high, eighties Madness style. It sounds familiar, it’s a jazzed up version of something. Cue lots of chin-tapping, before you realise that it’s… the theme tune of Dad’s Army.
Or, of course, they know that the tune will hit our deep-seated nationalist button without draping themselves in the Union Jack – that means pulling in the Daily Star crowd without alienating the norms. Still, next time I’m browsing the hummus selection down Sainsburys, I’ll be keeping an eye out for George-enrobed D-listers on manoeuvres.
Andrew has a new Big Idea every week at Den of Geek. Read his last column here.
