Misplaced Childhood

After a few days where we've seen North and South Korea at loggerheads, big trouble off the coast of Gaza and a psycho killer (apparently) caught in Yorkshire, a television advert shouldn't really irritate me.

But it has, and it's the latest World Cup cash in ad from Mars, featuring John Barnes recreating his World In Motion vocal skills. Now, despite the fact that back in the late 80s he made my team (and many others) look rather silly by breezing past defenders with the utmost ease, I've always had a lot of time for Barnes. He had stupid amounts of skill and, at my school, was the player that most of us (a bunch of working class white herberts) wanted to 'be' on the playground. It didn't matter if you supported Man United, Everton or Arsenal: John Barnes was a class act and you wanted to play like him, unless you were either me (who wanted to be Bryan Robson) or the strange kid who insisted Steve McMahon had a lot to offer.

World In Motion itself brings up a golden memory of being nine years old, singing along with the others as we believed England would be World Champions, 1990. Such youthful optimism: shame the actual England performances in the tournament were pretty much awful until the semi - both Belgium and Cameroon came very close to eliminating them earlier on.

I digress: the point is that Barnes has now cashed in on that memory to create a truly shite commercial. It shouldn't make me angry, I know, I know. I should use this bile to get angry about global inequality and injustice. Instead, I wish I could be like Colonel Kilgore and order a napalm strike on that park during the filming process. Sorry, Digger.

This also reminds me that Mars also used Blue Monday for an ad campaign some years ago. I half expect the Freebass tour that starts tomorrow to be sponsored by the Undertones' favourite sweet. Altogether now: "There's glucose for energy, caramel for strength/The chocolate's only there, to keep it the right length."