Well. I didn’t see that coming. You can add the victory of the MoneySupermarket Strutters in the poll to find the worst advert of 2016 to Brexit and Trump. Somehow the advert has ended up feeling the worst of that shitty triumvirate, though arguably it’s less likely to cause the end of human existence as we know it.
The meerkats have settled into a sort of low-level ‘it’s-never-going-away-deal-with-it’ humadruzz; GoCompare regenerates every month or so in an effort to find a new non-lethal weapon designed to make you purge your stomach and void your bowels; Confused.com has thrown its no-inconsiderable weight behind the not-inconsiderable weight of James Corden.
They’re all annoying, but none of them wear it so badly as the MoneySupermarket adverts, which also display a wholly undeserved smugness. The freak hit of the EpicStrut advert has spawned a series of total duds, carpet-bombing the airwaves like the pitiful follow-up singles of an already-forgotten X-Factor winner. It’s a zombie that’s still alive even though all its limbs have been hacked off.
That the MoneySupermarket strutters managed to destroy a field full of debilitating, quite appalling adverts speaks of a deep loathing among the public that outpaces even faeces-packed nutribullets such as James Corden’s Mr Greenlight advert, the abysmal ‘children talking about wiping their bottoms; Andrex adverts, the fucking GoCompare cabbie (part-Greg Wallace, part-David Yelland, twice as abysmal) and even The Bloody Admiral.
Notable ‘other’ answers are included in the Wordle below, but Shpock was a common choice. It’s also worth noticing that James Corden becomes the first person in the best part of a decade to attract a significant number of votes in two different adverts.
Where once banishment to a different continent once brought sweet relief, Corden seems to have become some sort of purgatorial instrument, destined to torment us in perpetuity.
The #epicwars – with strutters, builders and accountants (and random fat woman) – may have combined to create the worst advert of 2016, but it feels like Corden will abide for many, many decades.
