Christmas

You might well have guessed this was coming. Despite the fact that it's far too early for Yuletide-based antics, I want to talk about the John Lewis Christmas advert.

In case you haven’t seen it, it goes something like this:

There’s music. It’s a cover of an Oasis song, performed as a warbled  ballad. Somehow it’s worse than the original. Musical turd-polishing at its best.

A young girl looks through her telescope and sees a man living on the moon, alone. She waves, but of course he can’t see her. She sends him a telescope, gift-wrapped and attached to a bunch of balloons, so he can look back at her. A tear rolls down his cheek. A message that may as well be “buy our shit” appears on the screen.  We all feel very sad.

Fantastic, eh?

No, no it isn’t.

Who is the man on the moon? How did he get there? How does he breathe? What did he build his house from?

There are too many questions and it makes little sense. Anyone with even the tiniest knowledge of science could point out a multitude of mistakes that are in the two minute film.

And then the parcel arrives. Do they really expect us to believe that half a dozen helium-filled balloons could carry something that far, through the vacuum of space and actually land right outside his house?

They clearly take us for mugs. 

Oh, I see. Now I get it. It’s a clever message about loneliness at Christmas. A bit like that Mud song.

John Lewis spent a cool million pounds making the advert and their entire marketing campaign surrounding it will see that figure rise to £7 million. It is a partnership with Age UK that is hoped to raise a lot of money, despite this not being mentioned in the film. They could have just cut out the middleman and given £7 million straight to the charity and spared us the advert.

And the telescope the old man receives isn’t even available from John Lewis. The lying bastards.

I’ve got a better idea for a more realistic Christmas advert, if they’re interested.

The music will be a lounge version of Blur’s Country House, sung by someone the NME call “the new Adele”, but who will never actually make it.

A family are eating Christmas dinner. They’re all drunk because it’s the only way they can possibly get through the tawdry affair. A little girl enters the room, carrying a broken telescope. She looks upset. The mother gives the father a disapproving look for buying some cheap knock-off. The father exits the room and goes to the bathroom, where he looks at himself in the mirror. A tear rolls down his cheek. He snorts a huge line of cocaine, has a massive heart attack and dies. “Buy our shit”.

You’re welcome, John Lewis.