Kitchen Gun!

If you’re not familiar with the UK TV adverts for a cleaning product called Cillit BANG!, here’s a taster (and note, the presenter, a fictional character named Barry Scott) is being pretty calm and quiet in this one*, compared to some of the others (that, annoyingly, I can’t find online).**

Anyway, I stumbled across this disturbingly accurate parody of it. (By Peter Serafinowicz - the creator and star of Look Around You, and other stuff).
*Does anyone have a link to one of his more excited adverts? I can’t find any originals, just loads and loads of remixes.
**I understand there are other similar/related products in other countries, also presented by a fictional shouty guy - is that correct?

I saw the same advert. It was on “The Peter Serafinowicz” show. I honestly can’t remember if there was only one ‘Kitchen Gun’ scit or if there were several. If there were several then they didn’t vary much from the ‘punchline’ of the joke (taking the piss out of cilit bang)

I think they did ‘toilet grenade’ too.

Toilet Grenade you say?>

Magnificent.

Ah. I found one of the original, more shouty Cillit ads:

Is it just me or does “cillit” sound like they’re trying to cash in on the idea that dirty-sounding words sell?

Dirty-looking maybe, but the name is pronounced ‘sillit’, so it’s not dirty-sounding, unless I’m being naive.

The whole branding and marketing of this product is a big mess of bluff, subterfuge and attention-whoring anyway - for example, the bloke’s name isn’t Barry Scott - that’s nothing unusual, except that he had a blog ‘secretly’ disclosing this - but this was all apparently planned and scripted. I also heard that the dubbing on the commercials - which looks like the standard cheap European ad dubbed in English - was done this way on purpose to create a jarring, memorable effect. The later ads are also somewhat self-effacing and have hints of irony.

I didn’t take the ads seriously when I saw them first, I had no idea how they got onto an ad slot between programmes. And yes, the lip sync that looks like the ad was shot for a pan-European audience sticks in my mind.

Here it is translated into American…

Easy off BAM!

Just as annoying.