Hey, Mr Sporting Goods, quit that shouting!

By PAMELA WADE*

Do you want to know who it is that jerks you out of your comfortable armchair doze night after night? I don't mean your partner, snapping at you for snoring and drowning out the dialogue on his favourite television show. That is your own problem. No, I mean that ghastly, over-excited man who has been ranting for years now about the bargains to be had at a ubiquitous sports equipment shop.

I cannot tell you his real name, but let's just call him Mr Sporting Goods because obviously he is the head honcho there. He has to be: who else would have the power to overrule the advertising gurus to whom his company undoubtedly pays huge sums of money to persuade us to troop through his doors?

It must answer some sort of need deep within his psyche to be literally speaking up for his company. He evidently feels that the long and lame television parade of various bosses self-consciously fronting their own advertisements, which are memorable for their strikingly unnatural intonation and awkward gestures, is, in fact, a fine tradition that he is keen to follow.

Mr Sporting Goods gets pleasure out of yelling at us across our living rooms. Either that or he is too cheap to cough up for the campaign his advisers really wanted. Because everyone, and especially those in the business, knows that shouting at someone is the verbal equivalent of pointing. No one likes it, it makes you feel uncomfortable and if it happens often enough, you just might start doing it back.

This sort of behaviour does not work in the living room, where the television already has the full attention of all those still awake.

If we must have our evening's viewing punctuated at mind-numbingly frequent intervals by such large chunks of advertisements that we lose the thread of the plot, what we want is a presentation that is subtle, amusing and entertaining.

The sort of thing, in other words, that the multi-million dollar advertising industry is itching to give us.

These people are on our side. They are current and future movie directors, with big budgets, oodles of artistic imagination and teams of tame psychologists at their disposal. They do not want to be known for providing mere scripts to be bellowed.

No one ever won an award or got into an international compilation programme for that kind of production. They have no interest in beating us into submission with a sledgehammer. What they want is to win us over with wit and cunning.

Of course, Mr Rebel is not the only offender. Mr Warehouse, Captain Flight Centre and Mrs Briscoe are right up there with him in the irritation stakes, equally oblivious to how counter-productive this technique is.

Perhaps they might be a little less hysterically enthusiastic if they were aware that they are customarily muted throughout the land as they suck in their first lungful of breath.

One of the viewers' many skills, forcibly learned as a self-protection measure, is a lightning-quick and deadly accurate forefinger stab at the remote.

If, that is, there is anyone left in the room to press the button, because there is one other major burden the long-suffering television viewer has to bear.

It is such an old chestnut that I hesitate to mention it. It is, of course, the sheer volume of advertising we have to endure. Other viewers in other countries are much less beleaguered by this problem, but it seems that for us there is no alternative.

We have so much advertising, so often, that each time the programme is interrupted there is a mass exodus of viewers from the room. We go to make cups of tea, check our email, have a quick shower, take the dog for a spin round the garden or skim through Harry Potter.

What we do not do is hang around to be yelled at by some moron who believes that size is everything and that a man's most impressive feature is his big voice.

* Pamela Wade is an Auckland writer.