Dear LPG Readers,  

While taking a recent digital walk on my phone one day not so long ago, I found a bit of interesting information which got me thinking.  I think that we all know that we oldies are more likely to be the television watchers of the UK these days because the youngsters have all gone a bit ‘stream-mad’.   

That choice is something we have had ever since 1955, when ITV broke the BBC’s monopoly on what we could watch at any one given time, although the slim choices of those days have become ‘fatter’ by the year.  

But, even though my family only got its first television in the mid-1960s, I know that the television advert was part of the independent television package right from the start, and they have been hounding us ever since.  

I remember when the one thing that they nearly all had in common in the early days, was that little star which would pop up and include the price of most of the products advertised, and although the pointy-shaped price tag has all but vanished, the ads have become more and more inventive.    

The other thing I have noticed about those adverts is that they come in waves like a fashion.  There are the evergreens of course: the perfumes, food products, cosmetics and personal care products, cars and banking services which seem to never go away, but over the years we have had the seasonal ones too.   

These days we are used to the Christmas adverts starting before Halloween is over with the celebrated John Lewis advert now hitting the screens in early November.  Christmas comes and goes and Boxing day brings a mixture of the summer holiday adverts while we are all still freezing, and diet and exercise plans and products hit the screens at about that time too.  We only have time to take a few breaths before the jewellery, chocolate and perfume people are preparing us for Valentine’s day.  Easter and spring cleaning seem to come next and start to appear before the valentine cards have been read.  The school holidays are just beginning when the school uniform adverts come into play, and the autumn school term heralds talk of black Friday and Cyber Monday before you realise it.  Have you noticed how the 24 hours of Black Friday have been subtly increased since it was first created?  Advertisers have managed to refer to it as a weeklong, 168-hour event in recent years and I even saw an advert which referred to Black November in early October this year.    

I suspect no television watcher of our age will forget the surge in double glazing adverts back in the 1970s which were accompanied by all that cold calling.  Then we learned all about the acronym PPI in the 2010s until a deadline was put on that one.  No one will forget the wave of comparison website adverts with the meercats, that unforgettable opera-singing character and those adverts that, no matter how they started, would end with the one-word question, ‘Confused?’    

They sell us stuff without us even noticing and, annoying though they are, because they nearly always appear at the most interesting part of the game show or when the watcher has just got to a drama’s cliff-hanger, we older television watchers accept that they are here to stay. 

But I have to say that the latest genera of adverts are not in the best taste. We older viewers know that our days are numbered (and I accept that far too many of us still have avoided getting such things sorted) but the latest wave of adverts that are focussing on our exits from this world are coming at us thick and fast these days and are hard for some older people to watch.  While the will-writing and life insurance ones can be haunting, those about cheap funeral arrangements have to be the hardest to be bombarded with.  While most adverts are focussed on how good (authentic, convenient, innovative, hi tech, status-giving, or time saving) their product is these days, have you noticed the funeral industry’s trend to go right back to how cheap their products are?  

I have particular issues with the ones that offer us the idea that their people will have a chat and a cup of tea when they bring your ashes back to your family, you can leave all your money to your family rather than waste it on a proper send off, and the one that offers a song all about the advantages of engineering a cheap exit has to offer some older people who watch, the idea that life is not really worth celebrating anymore.   

I know that we have hundreds of channels now but these adverts seem to litter all the ones which show the memory-jogging retro programmes that we oldies get nostalgia value from.  I just hope the next wave of adverts that come to the fore will give our older minds a rest from all this depressing stuff; and quickly! 

DE, Rushey Green