Singer steers brand toward tedium, earns money

The new Joss Stone-fronted advert for Cadbury’s Flake is a strange fish indeed, and oddly asexual when one considers the brand legacy (suggestive mouth movements, bath water splashing all over the place – Herbal Essences ‘my cup runneth over in the shower’-style exclamations, etc etc). Whatever your opinion of these ads, they could never be criticised for being unmemorable, or lacking character – surely a mortal sin in the world of advertising. The sole nod to sexuality is when Stone coquettishly fishes about for chocolate dropped down her top. Such is the lack of racy content, that it may even have slipped past the Irish film censors back in the day – and they were quite something.

Often using the Ten Commandments to inform the judgement of what was known as the ‘Film Censors Office’ (to be renamed the ‘Classification Office’ – modern Dublin is not a place one associates with strict morality, especially at 3am on a Friday night), the more remarkable edits included the annexing of the entire Anne Bancroft / Dustin Hoffman relationship from The Graduate. Imagine how little sense many of those ‘100 Greatest Sexy Films’ clip shows must make to the older generation. Sex, divorce, World War II, indecent dancing, priests drinking in public – all gone.

‘Begorrah, I don’t remember that bit in Espresso Bongo where Cliff Richard gets a massage. It never would have happened in my day – I don’t know about you, Doris, but I need a brandy.’ (Most right-thinking people would, to be fair.)

Aside from the above, the portrayal of the Pope and the sacraments were also a highly sensitive point – to the extent that he was entirely removed from a newsreel in 1937. One is reminded of the recent controversy over the cartoon portrayals of the prophet, although a direct comparison is theologically tricky, and probably a little flip.