PeterJonesWriter
27 Aug 09, 2:23pm
Contributor The main sentence in this article was "would this advert be allowed if the accents were stereotypical Afro Carribbean or Indian". That was it basically, yes or no. However, I last looked at the replies on Saturday and was extremely disappointed to find that they were juvenile at best and highly abusive at the other end of the scale. I stand by my article 100% and thank the team at the Guardian online for publishing it. I have been informed that there is some kind of conspiracy theory circulating that I actually work for comparethemarkets.com and that the Guardian has been duped into publishing my article. As the article advocates the removal of the advert from TV I find this perverse logic of the highest order. Sorry to disappoint but I am just a normal guy working in London and my article has no other motive than to address the issues stated in it. The only people to have been duped here are not the Guardian but anybody who genuinely bought into this ridiculous theory.
The article was not about political correctness, it was about showing those that deem themselves to be so smugly politically correct that they have scored an own goal. The article was not about accents either as Russian accents are used on TV to advertise vodka all the time.
There are more of these adverts coming out in the Autumn and thereafter a film so time will tell how they will eventually be received and perceived. As is so often the case with TV programmes and adverts though it can be decades before we eventually look back and see what should have been so obvious at the time.
