How do they make scotch eggs? Really, how do they? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since it appeared on my television in a recent Fosters advert. The campaign, entitled ‘good call’, centres on the premise of two Australian blokes lazing around in a beach shack - offering long-distance phone advice to incompetent British males in crisis.
The duo are a handsome and cuddly buddy combo called Brad and Dan (it’s never specified which is which, though by the tried and trusted method of televisual name deduction, I’m going to plump for the good looking one being Brad, and his rotund partner in crime being Dan - chubby sidekicks are never called Brad), and despite all their good advice, they frustratingly never actually reveal how on earth one makes scotch eggs. I had to Google that. It’s unfortunately nowhere near as excitingly Willy Wonkerish as I’d hoped.
‘Good call’ is the latest attempt by beer manufacturers to tap into the ‘blokes like it when blokes are blokey to other blokes’ stereotype that has worked so well for them in the past. For its part, it succeeds - though the things I found most engaging about the advert (and its second instalment) were probably not the things which I was immediately supposed to.
The scene is set for the opening of this sprawling, multi-part epic on a plush, sun-drenched beach Down Under. A phone is ringing ominously in the distance. Two men eventually answer the call - on what appears to be a 1940s ham radio - from within a wooden shack; so far, so David Lynch. The men are revealed to be our protagonists and guides through the Freudian moral maze that awaits: they’re the ubiquitous and aforementioned Brad & Dan, or Dan and Brad, or whatever.
The caller is disappointingly not revealed to be the shifty head of a secret underground organisation, ringing to confirm the commencement of Operation Desert Hawk by means of a coded message (opportunity missed there, I feel). Instead, it’s Ben from Southend - a troubled man who has been more troublingly squeezed so unflatteringly into a pink cardigan.
‘Benno’ is plagued by haunting thoughts of his girlfriend’s inevitable aging to resemble her mother. This is a quandary which immediately springs our heroes into action. This action, as it is, consists of nonchalantly sliding open a compartment on their coffee table to reveal a secret inner fridge, a contraption so fantastical that I spent the entire rest of the ad completely drowning out what was being said with shouts of ‘that’s fantastic!’. After depressingly realising that I didn’t have one, and would thus be cruelly forced to actually get up to fetch a beer, I frantically Googled the advert. I was just so gripped by the character development, the plotting and the pacing that I simply had to see this through to its conclusion.
Brad - or Dan, but probably Brad (as established earlier) - rose to Ben’s challenge with gusto, reminding his young charge of the values of love, life, compromise and selfless dedication through the fitting medium of late 1980s soap opera romance. “Did Scott ever wonder if the lovely Charlene was going to end up looking like Madge?” he said with poignancy, forcing a sharp and profound shift in perspective and new found sense of clarity in the hapless, cardigan-restricted Ben.
It was at this point that the infamous scotch egg conundrum was mentioned, but not before a woman with a fish had turned up for no discernable reason – before proudly displaying the said fish and never being seen again.
I have problems with women in beer adverts. I like women, but I know they don’t like me drinking beer. Furthermore, they aren’t particularly impressed by it. I know this: I’m not stupid enough to fall for the idea that drinking will suddenly make me more alluring to startlingly attractive women holding fish. Beer adverts should be confined to blokes being blokey to each other, and the attractive women (and fish) should be confined to Lynx adverts; which, of course, are aimed at 14 year old boys who don’t know better.
The second instalment in this franchise (which I’m hoping they’ll release in box set form by Christmas) was equally nuanced, containing all the elements of its predecessor, but without the cool fridge table thing or any fish. This time our intrepid duo are faced with the age-old problem of personal freedom. How important is our personal space? How much do our actions impact on others? How important are we, really, in the entirety of creation? And what steps should we take to preserve the sanctity of the self? Shouting is the answer here, apparently. And an apt one, I feel, as it’s perfectly in tune with the mindset of the British male during a night on the tiles after a bit too much ‘responsible drinking’.
I await with baited breath the next part of this saga, for it is sure to be every bit as wondrous and enchanting as its forerunners. Good call, Fosters. Good call.