Lockdown: Day 4

But wait – there’s more!

I’ve never watched much TV in the daytime. Even now I’m not sitting in my dressing gown watching endless soaps or shows where people yell at each other as a presenter tries to restore calm, or others exhibit horrendous physical problems they’re apparently too embarrassed to talk to their doctor about but are happy to show to thousands of people, via the medium of TV, who they don’t know from a bar of soap. Not my style at all and I wonder who does watch shows like this. Each to their own. 

I don’t usually turn on the TV until after dinner but, like most of us at the moment, I am watching the daily update. It often coincides with eating lunch so we suffer through ads we’d normally mute because we’ve forgotten to take the remote control to the table and neither of us can be arsed* to interrupt our eating to fetch it. You can’t accuse us of not being committed.

Ads are different in the daytime. They seem to be mostly for goods not available in shops. Well, we can’t go out anyway so it’s hardly relevant. We are exhorted to Call now! to avoid missing out, to take advantage of a reduced price or a free gift. Today’s ad is for a bed that adjusts – you know the kind that are in hospitals, height adjustable and with a mattress that, well, moves. It starts all doom and gloom: Having trouble sleeping? with frowning people holding their heads in their hands in despair. Then the announcer’s voice becomes akin to that of a child who’s just been told it’s ice-cream-and-unlimited-screen-time: This will solve all your problems! 

Whether it’s for a bed or an exercise machine, there’s a point in all such ads where you know what’s coming. You’ve already been told that if you Call Now! you’ll be entitled to a 50% discount (and don’t forget this offer is not available in shops) and the information repeated, just in case you missed it the first four times the overexcited man said it (and it always seems to be a man, never a woman’s voice. Is this because, in advertising territory, it’s women that tend to fall for these things – sorry, are the target market – and the suggestion is they trust a man more?) The excitement rises a notch and then… But wait, there’s more! Call in the next thirty minutes and you will get, free, this perfect-fit, mattress cover! What’s the point of offering one that isn’t a perfect fit? And if you call after thirty minutes what happens? Do you then get a sh#t-fit cover?

I don’t get it, and I suspect I’m not the target market… hang on, what’s that. Ooh, I can get fit in only eighteen minutes a day?

Excuse me, I have a phone call to make and the clock is ticking.

*I typed this on the iPad as Neil was using the computer and it autocorrected this to arrested. Quite an extreme punishment for being lazy.