Annoying adverts: The pornography of crying.

It used to be that the British were world famous for their lack of public displays of emotion - remember the 'stiff upper lip'? – but that seems to have quietly become extinct over time. Over the past few years – the UK has fallen in love with public displays of crying. I blame the American TV imports such as Oprah, Springer, etc. This led us to our own home grown chat shows and with the explosion of multiple channel TV which in turn led to a search for cheap ways to fill all that air time -and so was invented the 'reality show'. You can be almost certain that these days if the show involves a member of the public and it might be a show about dieting, clothes, their pet dog, their treasured processions, their untidy house, their career – whatever,– at some point it will feature a scene where that person is made to cry. That's the money shot right there. Then later came celebrity crying.... but I start to digress.

So now I've given you a bit of history – I want to draw your attention to one particular commercial that's been driving me crazy for the past couple of years. It has irritating jangly guitar music – and an indie-band boy doing a worbly 'soulful' vocal (which is already more than enough to set my teeth on edge and make me queasy) – and a blue sofa and a chair a weirdo overly-friendly man and most important of all - a box of famous brand paper tissues – all out in the open air on various street locations. Yes, out on the street. The premise being that random members of the general public are invited to sit on the sofa and talk to a sympathetic professional actor – until they are eventually driven to tears and so get to use the famous brand tissue and will notice it's wonderful tear and snot absorbing properties. Which is no doubt far superior to any other paper tissue and also great value for money. Of course this really is all a bit disturbing and it is pandering to the UK's newly-found love/spectator sport of watching people cry in public. Gross. Except of course the makers of this commercial have noticed that well, yes, it is a bit creepy and disturbing actually – so they've backtracked on themselves a bit and have since added in a few people being happy smiley happy laughy, and even some people having a group hug, and well, generally altogether having a good time that doesn't feature using paper handkerchiefs. Of course here the paper tissue manufacturers have missed a golden opportunity of showing people having themselves such a good time that they have the definite need for a clean up afterwards with tissues. Only -please let's not show that happening on a sofa in the open streets OK?