Name: Captain Birds Eye.
Age: 56.
Appearance: George Clooney meets Fred Sirieix.
Hang on – I thought Captain Birds Eye was a jolly Jack Tar-meets-Father Christmas type? Not any more.
What happened to the white-bearded plump one? Seventy-year-old Mitch Commins, who essayed the role for two years, replacing the original Cap’n, John Hewer, who dominated the seas and the frozen breadcrumbed pescatarian stick market from 1967 to 1998, has himself been replaced.
By what sounds like quite a different kettle of fish. Riccardo Acerbi is an Italian actor and watersports enthusiast who has been chosen after, a Birds Eye spokesman assures us, “a rigorous audition process”, during which he impressed the company with his “genuine approach to portraying the captain and his love of the sea” to front the company’s new £8m advertising campaign.
But – are people right? Is he hot? He must be – in the new advert, he jumps off a sailing boat into the sea before returning to enjoy a plateful of fish fingers with his grandchildren.
You know what I mean. Is he genuinely phwoaar, or is this all coming from the type of person who professes to fancy Peppa Pig’s dad? I would contend that he is more than capable of inducing unwholesome thoughts among a more general populace.
About the motion of the ocean? Riding the waves? And many others besides. Including, among pessimists, catching crabs.
So, we’re sexing up fish fingers now? Looks like it.
Is nothing sacred? Priests are always sexy!
No, look, come on – can’t we have something left unsullied? Something that’s not desperately trying to turn us on? And couldn’t that thing be – for the love of God – fish fingers? No.
Why not, though? Because sex sells. Or, at least, it’s a lot easier to sell things if customers are distracted by their lust-filled haze and, next time they espy your product in a supermarket aisle, associate it in some dim, subconscious manner with The Nice Feeling they get when they see your advert.
Do say: “Hello, sailor!”
Don’t say: “You’ll have to get your own tea, kids – I’m off to a life of depravity on the ocean waves.”
