Commercial Breakdown.

In a newspaper I was flicking through earlier this week there was a feature on how to lose weight. I must've been bored to read through this shit, but anyway, one of the tips was to run on the spot during the ad breaks when you're watching telly. This might sound like a good idea, but this isn't going to work for me because I very rarely watch commercial TV. This is mainly because ITV and Channel 4 these days broadcast nothing but utter bilge. (There are exceptions; I love TV Burp on ITV, and I've been enjoying what I've watched of Dead Set on Channel 4. What is there not to love about a zombie Davina McCall eating one of her colleagues' entrails?)
And when I do watch something from commercial TV, it's usually been recorded so I fast forward through the adverts, so I'd be running on the spot for about twenty seconds, and the tremors from me jogging my lardy arse up and down would be enough to shake my can of lager of the coffee table. And spilling beer is a crime in my house.
However, I do see the odd advert, usually during half time when I'm watching a football match in the pub. (Actually, there's a cool ad doing the rounds at the moment, I think it's for VW, where a guy has a series of kung-fu fights against versions of himself. I like that one.) During the Villa match last Sunday, I saw an advert which upset me. Iggy Pop is selling insurance. What the fuck is Iggy Pop doing trying to sell me insurance? When he sang 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' with the Stooges, I didn't think he meant Churchill. Actually, I'm surprised he has a policy, this is a guy who regularly cuts himself open on stage, and has a history of heroin abuse. I bet his premiums are astronomical.
It's not really punk, though, is it? Speaking of which, there are apparently a series of ads which have John Lydon selling butter. I only know about this because my brother almost had a fight with him when he got shoved out of the way by one of his minders when they were filming a commercial in Trafalgar Square.( Apparently, when my brother Marc squared up to one of the minders; "Brick Shithouse, he had muscles in his piss" according to our Marc, Johnny Rotten said something like "That's it mate, show no fear" to which my brother replied something which involved ripping Lydon a new orifice. Miraculously, my brother walked away unscathed. He's good at that. But I digress.)
Who'd have thought, even five years ago, that we would be seeing adverts in which Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop are selling insurance, Johnny Rotten flogging butter, or Birmingham's very own Ozzy Osbourne promoting World Of Warcraft? You may disagree, but online RPGs are NOT Rock n'Roll!
I know selling out is part and parcel of success these days, but Bill Hicks, who said any artist is off the artistic roll-call as soon as they do a commercial as it's akin to sucking the Devil's cock, was absolutely right.