Perving at passers-by

We walked past an especially cute young lady in Oxford last weekend, who spoiled her good looks with an excessive amount of makeup. I commented to Haron on my recommended solution: “Strip, scrub, spank”.

“Who are you calling a stripper,” my wife replied with a giggle.

“Well, who are you calling a scrubber?” We paused for a moment, before I added: “Actually, I don’t think she looks like a spanker, do you?”

I’ve since spent most of this week in central London. Wandering along Regents Street between meetings, I spied a rather gorgeous model being photographed holding a placard proclaiming, “Make the most of now” and the Vodafone logo.

No doubt the ad agency has calculated that potential customers will find their eyes drawn to an advert featuring a gorgeous, scantily-clad young woman. And then we’ll immediately swear allegiance for the rest of our days to the particular mobile phone company whose product she’s endorsing. Clever, eh, these advertising folks? That must have taken them all of, I don’t know, ten minutes in the pub one night?

Anyway, I did think the idea of “cute lass holding placard” was wasted on cell phones. How much more interesting it would be had the slogan revealed that, “I’m much better behaved now”, with the logo of a cane company. Or maybe, “I’ve learnt my lesson” above a photograph of a birch; “I won’t do it again” next to a drawing of tawse, or “I promise to be a good girl” accompanied by a neatly-sketched, doubled-over belt.

They might have to smudge the model’s make-up a little to make her face look tear-stained, of course. Or maybe they’d require my services to administer a sharp six of the best prior to the photoshoot, to get that really authentic look… And if any ad agencies are reading, my rates really are awfully reasonable.