Sheeba

"The trouble with women", stated BBC Breakfast host Bill Turnbull on Friday, "Is that they don't like the bish - bash - bosh, and nor do they appreciate the touchy feely."

I literally choked on my Cornflakes. In the history of morning television, has an interview ever been started with a greater sentence? I very much doubt it. And he got away without getting smacked around the head by the stern one with short-spiky hair. Superb.

Anyway, after I had recovered, the weather came on with the annoying Scottish woman who I am sure spends an inordinate amount of time on Northern Scotland. "Heavy and prolonged showers in the Hebrides, Aberdeen and as far south as the Grampians." What, really? Rain? In Scotland? Better hold that story on the alleged bear faeces found in an area with a load of trees, cos Carol is gonna rock your world apart.

(To be fair if you have ever watched a weather forecast with someone from the South West, they usually think that every weather report purposely avoids their area. I have honestly thought that the East Devon weather report that is sometimes featured on Westcountry Live spends too long on Honiton.)

To save myself talking at the screen (which I think Mrs P finds equally humourous and worrying), I flipped over to GMTV, which happened to have gone to advert break. The advert showing was for the cat food Sheeba and this reminded me of a blog I was to do a while back.

The tagline is as old as advertising itself. Since it's first usage by Vikings to sell their package tours of the UK, memorable slogans have stuck in the brain and have become synonymous with its product. Who can forget such classics as "BUPA's Gonna Kick Your !£$%!@# Head In", "I Bet He Drinks Diamond White", and Emigrate Australia's "Because Sometimes 'Sorry' is the Hardest Word".

Sadly, the great art of the adline has become tarnished by the rent-a-quote line. Little beknown to the majority of the buying public, there is a small office just outside of Shrewsbury that takes old lines, recycles them and resells them at a cut-price to companies too crap to come up with their own ideas. These lines often have little, if anything, to do with the product. Equally, these lines are absolutely forgettable, thus making highlighting the worst offenders very difficult.

However, Friday morn I did catch one and through an abstract form of mind-mapping have managed to commit it to memory. The product, Sheeba cat food. The line, "Share the Experience".

What does that mean? In what way can you share the experience of a cat digesting jellied chunks of miscellaneous animal parts without giving yourself serious bad breath? If the resulting six hours of gut-rot is what your cat experiences, then chances are that you ain't going to be buying it again. And if anyone tries to suggest it is meant on an "emotional" level, I will personally see to it that they are subjected to watching my new DVD out for Christmas "Love Actually - A Rant in Twelve Parts", including the bonus three hours of cider-induced freestyling tour-de-force "Live at the General Redvers".

So here's an alternative for you Sheeba. "Sheeba - Putting the Cat into Cat Food." Now that would be memorable.