The world is sitting with big, fat tears rolling down their faces watching this advert for John Lewis, at least that’s what’s the internet is telling us.
Really? The first time I became aware of it was when people started telling us about it on the Suggest an AdTurd form and my housemate started throwing things at the telly.
The first thing I thought was Bill Fucking Joel. I’m not sure how lyrics like:
She can kill with a smile / She can wound with her eyes
or;
She can ruin your faith with her casual lies
really invite me to buy into this touching life story. To me it suggests deep duplicity and cruelty and, of course, she also ‘steals like a thief’.
That’s just for starters though. Because she will also ‘carelessly cut you and laugh while you’re bleedin’. This woman sounds awful! She’s a sociopath!
I’d suggest that the ad is missing a few scenes. The one where she gets backscuttled by a bloke at work and then lies to her husband about it.
The bit where she embezzles tens of thousands of pounds from the charity she works for as an fund-raising manager.
Or the bit where she wallops her kid and locks her overnight in the pantry for making a mess in the kitchen. And why not take that ‘laugh while you’re bleeding’ line literally?
Hell, it may not sell as many teasmaids, but it’d be a much better advert.
• FYI: The song is performed here by Fyfe Dangerfield from the Guillemots – a massively overrated band in AdTurds’ book