Badverts..

There's a great new, aimless yet amusing, Turkish Airways advert starring the Manchester United football team on a plane joking about with a football during a flight, only for the ball to be hoofed across the aisle by Wayne Rooney directly at Sir Bobby Charlton's head. Luckily Edwin Van Der Sar jumps up from the seat behind Sir Bobby and one handedly saves the day.

Football adverts always come to some grief. Wasn't it the Nike advert which featured Rooney, Ronaldo et al. encased in araldite or somesuch and portrayed as Kings of the World when all the players featured then went on to have shocking World Cups? Meanwhile back in the real world Rooney couldn't hit a barndoor, has fallen out with the manager and is probably going to leave the team in January...for City!

The advert ends with a saccharine verse "We are Turkish Airlines/We are Eternally Yours" which means about as much as a table leg floating in a pond set to the warming up of a ghostly string quartet.

Meanwhile I've prepared enough press releases to sniff that Sir Bobby may not have really come up with the following accompanying text:


Sir Bobby was delighted to get involved on the day, ‘For me Manchester United will always be the greatest football club in the world. The partnership with Turkish Airlines brings fans all around the world closer to the Club which is fantastic news’.

Why not write something that actually means something? What's that, it's a commercial deal with no real emotional connection between the two entitites, you say? Ahh..

UPDATE: I knew Rupert Murdoch has been reported as cowering in the Caymans as a result of the ever increasing readership of Pozdrowienia z Ursynowa but not to the extent that he has ordered his reporters to copy my articles!