SEND FOR THE HATING TABLETS! My annual battle with misogyny gets underway with the release of this year’s Lambrini adverts. You know the form by now: three women enjoying ‘girly night out/in’ with bottle of stomach-wrenching pear plonk trade ‘dirty jokes’. Mercilessly the Lambrini people have not even changed the pictures of the women (though the ad’s background is now an unpleasant pale green) so the horrible image of the middle one in mid-cackle is glued on my brain once more.
Amazingly though the one-liners have got worse. Last year you may recall the main gag was as follows: ‘We had a RACE last night. He CAME FIRST as usual.’ (HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR). OK yes fair enough, it is just about possible to imagine a human being making that joke and maybe even others laughing. This year though the tagline is ‘When he said he liked BRAZILIANS I didn’t know he meant FOOTBALLERS.’ Perhaps I am na’ve but it boggles me even trying to imagine the supposed interaction leading to this shockingly weak, forced runt of a joke.
Now, alcohol does indeed make you laugh at any old shit, as readers who have played Dirty Crossword will be aware. If I was promoting an alcohol brand though, I am not sure this is the aspect I’d play up ‘ look look our product will turn you into a real chump! But the alternative is too horrid to contemplate: that Lambrini have identified a strata of consumers who aspire to making wisecracks as clever as ‘When he said ” (no, I can’t even type it again). It can’t be true. It mustn’t be true. AND YET’