Get to Know the Aga: ITV (Border) adverts, Christmas Day 1994

Описание: The third set of adverts from A Poppins on Christmas Day in the afternoon is probably the least Christmassy of the lot, as if painfully aware that this is turkeynap time, and the only people awake enough to look at the screen are too bloated on carbs to care.

So the first advert is for WORK. Specifically relatively new-fangled qualifications. Apparently some Smurfs in Cumbria have discovered the NVQ, which is pretty good going considering they've only been around seven years. Yes, it's regional styles again: lots of stock footage of Cumbrians at work, looking really happy and fulfilled, shot on unflattering VT. Great! Qualifications. Think about it, won't you?

Then, it's time for your choice of sales. First there's that near-apocalyptically sparse computer-generated sandwich board for Bulloughs, opposite Carlisle Cathedral. They're open tomorrow, Boxing Day. Alternatively you could wait a day and try Chapmans at Victoria Viaduct. In fact don't try either because they both died ten years ago.

1995! Is what it will be in a week, if anyone's counting. Why not get a new car for the new year? Why not get a Honda? You might as well! YOU MIGHT AS WELL DO WHATEVER YOU LIKE. Here's your local dealership with a Quantel slideshow. Lloyd Honda, which sounds like a low-ranking pornstar but isn't, is actually still around, although they seem to concentrate solely on motorbikes these days.

Or if you're suffering from a crippling chintz deficiency, and your eyes can stand it, you can attempt to survive Factory Bedding and Textiles, who are explicitly trying to get rid of fabrics so ugly that no-one would take them for full-price. "Power Ranger cushions", as far as I can tell, are exactly what they sound like and actually less hideous than whatever's going on in this backdrop. After that, the soothing blues and whites of the Colorado Ski Warehouse slide are like a balm for the eyes.

Next, a real advert! Albeit a shortened one. One of those "rural rustics meet modern reality" ideas. In this case the rustics are from the Highlands and consist of kilted men too stupid to have heard of stock cubes, or indeed the term "hen night", enabling their wives to go to strip clubs under the cover of hunting for chickens. This probably worked better in the full 30-60 second version; boiled down (no pun intended) to ten seconds it's easy to miss the basic premise. Knorr: stop pronouncing the K, we're done with that stupid joke.

Here's an exciting man with an exciting tache talking about the travel business. Specifically it's the Trailfinders founder Mike Gooley, who seems to have deliberately cultivated a straight-backed low-key nerd personality, complete with adenoidal voice, to offset the comedy value of his surname. He says some uninteresting things about his philosophy of travel and what have you, and then segues into the point which is that he uses American Express because it's great and fab. I've uploaded this once before, from the same day even, I think.

Talking of travel, have you booked your holidays yet? Here's that ubiquitous Thomas Cook advert with the glassesman and Hugh Laurie and failed rhyming slang, followed by the Milky Way advert with the attempted helicopter and Chris Evans again.

And then we fall back into regionalia with a weird kind of collaborative advert for the Aga, the cooker of Swedish design that the British took into their hearts like ABBA themselves. Paul Coia (or someone) lovingly explains the benefits of owning one, including the fact that they come in multiple colours and are square. Also they generate heat so prodigiously you won't need a radiator, can burn solid fuel, and are mind-meltingly expensive to buy and run. Do bear in mind that gas is being (slowly) globally phased out, though. Aga, won't you? Anyway this little appliance hagiography comes from three shops in the Border region who would be happy to supply you with an Aga. Aga!

Oh, and Rue and the Rockets still have those records and tapes in Our Price. We end with a brief reminder that Cumbria TEC is a thing and this is what it stands for, in case you've been wondering since the start of the break. Since it doesn't amount to much I'm going to use this space to talk about a bit of lost media that sometimes nags at me. Like this it was an advert for Qualifications that started at one end of a break and ended at the other. From no earlier than 1990 and no later than 1995. The first part involved a blonde woman in glasses in a darkened office peering at a computer screen and wondering what an abbreviation meant. Possibly NVQ, maybe BTEC. It might have been both. Anyway it ends abruptly after she asks the question and comes back at the end of the break with someone explaining it all to her. I saw it once, on a Saturday evening I think, in the early 90s and never again, but occasionally the fragments resurface and annoy me. Anyone know what I'm talking about? It might well have been regional to the TSW area, like these to Border.