Soundbytes: Just shout when you've ad enough

I like television, I really do. I think it is great. I?ve learned tons of things that I would never have known if I didn?t watch. For example, I?ve learned that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, that Grant Mitchell in Eastenders may be a psychopath but deep down has a heart of gold, and Jeremy Clarkson is a prat.

I think we underestimate how much we can learn; there?s cooking from Masterchef, home economics from Only Fools and Horses, and first aid from Casualty. I can spend hours in front of it just sitting in the glow of the screen ? I did just that last night, but that was mainly because the lights had blown. And let?s face it if it wasn?t for Star Trek, EPS power taps, temporal anomalies and phased warp plasma relays would be completely beyond us. Stephen Hawking watch out.

But it does have a downside, an Achilles? heel (which, because I watch TV, I know can be cured by going to Clarks Shoes). TV?s weakness is that its too much of a giving medium. TV is just too nice and it allows all sorts of things that if it were a little more firm and decisive it would just say no to ? like, say, putting Baywatch on when a lot of us are at football and have to miss it.

On the whole, however, the learning opportunities are legion. I know it sounds amazing but I even learned about computers from it. It must have been 10 years ago and it was John Cleese advertising Compaq ? see I can still remember its name even today. Cleese showed us a computer and told us that they were built in Scotland and his brother-in-law had recommended them. They were very funny and I still remember Compaq even though there are lots of other manufacturers.

Which brings me to dominoes. I?ve always wanted to play dominoes but I never got the hang of it. As far as I could see it was a handful of old blokes smoking pipes sitting around a table banging down these small black oblong things. I always wanted to play, but I never learned because I didn?t smoke a pipe.

Thus imagine my surprise when I see an advert for Domino on the telly: ?brilliant? I think, I?ll watch this and learn. It was fronted by some grumpy bloke who I am informed is Denis Leary, and who is apparently a comedian. I have to say I was a little bothered that he had no small black oblong things, no old men sitting around a table and no pipes.

I was getting confused. Mr Leary was stalking around this warehouse place that had people using computers and being snide to them. Some kind of comprehension dawned on me when he started saying stuff like ?use the internet for something useful like running a business?, because I though it might be another computer software advert. But it didn?t seem like computers to me. And then it said Lotus on the screen. So it wasn?t about computers after all, it was obviously something to do with a Lotus sports car ? probably the Domino ? having some software in it.

One of the things the advert said was ?Work the Web?. I was a bit confused about that until I thought about cars and then I took ?Web? to refer to the type of car referred to as the Spyder, but I?m not an expert on that (I don?t watch Top Gear all that much). Interestingly, the screen at the end of the advert said Domino powered by Notes. I have to say this did strike me as a bit odd, as I?d thought a Lotus Domino would be powered by Ford or Renault, but like I say, I don?t watch Top Gear.

I?m also not quite sure where the connection between a Lotus sports car and the internet comes in though, but I?m sure that if I watch it again I?ll make it out.

It reminds me of that ICL advert last year, when a chap took his saxophone to another country and stood on a bridge with his chums. It took me a little while to work that one out but it was perfectly simple in the end: basically it wasn?t anything to do with the ICL that we know and, I think, makes computers. Instead it was the saxophone company ICL that specialises in trips to foreign countries to look at bridges and other structures. Obviously this chap had taken his saxophone and his friends on one of these trips ? it was all there in front of us.

This is what I like about the telly, see, it is unambiguous. If you show something on the screen, people are bound to know what you are talking about ? and if there are some subtle bits all you have to do is watch it through a couple of times to get it.

Although I do think a lot of people in the business underestimate the simplicity of the medium though. I mean, take the Domino advert, it was a clear as a bell and proved conclusively that you can advertise a Spyder type of sports car without stooping to show a picture of it even once.

Well done Lotus.