NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

In the loft there were half-a-dozen old, worn and well-thumbed 'National Geographic' magazines. Some were dated 1995, some 1980 and one from October 1970, exactly 40 years ago. I cut out the advertising of the 1970 one, mainly to prove that as many false claims were made by advertisers then as are now. The Datsun 1200 Coupe, for example, was described as like 'driving a wind tunnel'. I owned one of these cars, a 1974 model, about thirty years ago, and I can attest that it was rather more like driving a ship's funnel. It eventually lost an argument with a pothole and the suspension struts made an unexpected appearance through the inner wings. The ombudsman agreed with me that the Council was at fault for leaving the road in such a shocking state but laughed out loud when it came to the thorny subject of compensation. I certainly never ever went 'like the wind in this sleeky, high-powered machine,' nor did the car respond like a 'compact tornado.' The final piece of nonsensical braggadocio was that the Datsun 'stops on a dime, eats like a sparrow,and performs like an eagle.' Mine stopped in six car-lengths, if it stopped at all, ate like a vegetable marrow and performed like a beagle - running round and round in circles chasing its own tail. Still, I have no doubt that advertising played a part in my buying such a lemon. There was more of this extravagant wishful thinking. The BMW 2800 was described as having an engine that was a 'descendant of the first jet engine'; and the Ford Granada was 'just another luxury car', until you got into it, then, 'it was another world.' The elderly Granada I had developed rust-holes in the wings so large that you could have fitted dinner-plates in them, and when the Police pulled me over and suggested that I had better do something about it pronto, or I'd be up on a fizzer, I had no real option other than to scrap it. I'd probably leafed through the old National Geographic many years on and thought 'by gum, I couldn't half fancy being in another world, as this one's no bally good.' I'm with George Orwell, who declared that 'advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.' He died in the year I was born, so these trenchant views have stood the test of time. The only thing I wish is that I hadn't been sucked into buying so many useless things on the basis of the baleful influence of advertising. I watch the adverts on TV with the sound down, now - you can never be too careful.