Like We Won't Notice The Cadburys Gorilla Needs To Drum In Slo-mo Since They Changed The Music

This is how the advertising industry picture the viewing public: Imagine, if you will, a small, idiotic child. Now give him a crayon in the brightest possible hue: "Dolt Blue," for example, or "Yellow Shit-for-Brains". Now make him draw a big, happy, simple face. Just a wobbly circle, two dots and a smudge of jam and dribble for a smile. Now make the child eat the paper, wait for nature to take its inexorable, disgusting course, and the resultant mess will be a fairly accurate representation of the intelligence of the average viewer, according to Mr Advertiser.

And they're right, of course. We're all complete imbeciles when it comes to making decisions about spending our rapidly dwindling cash-monies. I'm possibly one of the most intelligent animals on the planet, and I was duped into spending Five English Pounds on a pointless super-sweet caffeinated beverage and pie of mince simply because the beverage was contained within a cardboard cup which was prematurely seasonally red. Christ, it's still 7 weeks until the birth of Santa! (Sorry, Bart Simpson. No, I don't mean 7 weeks until the birth of Bart Simpson. I... Oh, you know what I mean) And because of this wonderful, magical time of giving to various multi-national behemoths on behalf of your Auntie Maud, the laughing advert peoples are going batshit overdrive and spewing out the Chrimbo ads at a rate of sleigh-bell jingling knots.

They're all thematically very similar this year, excepting of course the pre-Christmas adverts for new and increasingly repulsive and gaudy means of supporting your festive buttocks. I don't really understand how so many sofa companies exist. I mean, who actually gets a new sofa each Christmas? I have existed for a good few years now and I have only ever bought one sofa. And that was with someone else, so that's only 0.5 of a sofa each. I only remember one change of sofa in my entire growing-up period. There can't be a sustainable market, unless there is an insane and terribly rich sub-section of the UK population who would welcome the invention of a sofa vending machine, as featured in a couch gag on the Simpsons (I assume. I may have made that up. Yay, I could write for the Simpsons!) Although saying that, I do recognise the utmost importance of Sitting within a Christmas period. It will be my third favourite verb in December.

But yes - in general all the actual big Xmas campaigns this year have gone for the "Celebrities - they won't be mixing with people like you!" angle, featuring a host of family-friendly, cuddly stars hanging out with each other, and no-one else. I once had a dream - trust me, this is going somewhere, possibly not as inspirational as it could be - that I was allowed access into a hallowed place, a supermarket that only celebrities were allowed to enter. It was entirely stocked with stuff that us norms had never heard of, the slightly gross highlight being coffee-flavoured Marmite. Morrison's have clearly been rummaging around in my subconscious, with Richard Hammond, Denise Van Outen and that gardening fella-me-lad palling about in their local hypermarche. They even know each other's holiday plans. They're obviously all part of some vile daisy-chain of sexual depravity, to which none of us unclean specimens will ever be granted access to.

And over to Casa del Marks'n'Sparks, in the permanent picturesque snowy winter that has never actually happened in British Christmas history. The usual M&S wimmin suffer their usual compulsion to gaily dance around with demented grins on their beauteous faces whenever they're within 10 metres of an M&S product, and the one who always lolls about in her pants lolls about in her pants (despite the aforementioned imaginary blizzard), and they are joined by bloody hell! It's Take That! And Lily Cole. Her presence strikes a bum note in an otherwise generic campaign. Her combination of an 8ft tall body of a nubile wench, Lolita-esque flirtation and startling haunted china doll face, which looks perfectly at home in a high-fashion high-concept fashion spread in Vogue, doesn't sit well in a mass-appeal advert where she's gadding about with Barlow et al, as it makes all of Take That look a) about 500 years old and b) like a load of filthy paedos. And again - no lowlife proletariat scum to be found.

Lastly in this non-exhaustive flick through the ad breaks Sainsbury's, who are admittedly running a festive advert with their credit-crunch normal mum, offering up their shop as the perfect place to buy shit presents for people you don't care about. But fear not, gouty saviour of the children Jamie Oliver hasn't left us. He's teamed up with Ant and Dec to cater a super-douper celebrity party. Oh, but look at Ant and Dec, the lovable fools! They want to serve cheese and pineapple! The evil advert people must really hate the Geordie twosome, as they are cast as absolute flaming morons. The most basic culinary feats dazzle and amaze them. "Look, I'm drizzling!" Ant (or maybe Dec) gibbers at one point, happy as a two-year-old marching into his parent's anniversary dinner and proudly displaying his first, gleaming, solo stool.

Oh, hang on. It's cos they seem like normal folk. They're just like us. Unquestionable cretins.