Film & TV Database

A countdown on the 100 greatest television advertisements as voted by the British public, the first tv poll of its kind. Actors, creative directors, set designers and jingle writers talk about the making of their successful ads. With contributions from Gary Lineker (Walkers crisps ads), Melanie Sykes (Boddingtons beer ads), Griff Rhys Jones (Heineken lager ads), Lorraine Chase (Campari ads), Victor Kiam (razor ads), Norman Lumsden (J.R. Hartley in the Yellow Pages ads), director Alan Parker (who talks about how he introduced characters with northern accents into adverts for the first time in Birds Eye beefburger ads, plus his work on 'Happiness is a Cigar called Hamlet' ads and Cinzano ads with Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins), director Tony Kaye (British Rail, Dunlop and Real Fires ads), composer Cliff Adams ('You're Never Alone With a Strand', Turkish Delight and Cadbury's Smash ads), Jenny Logan (actress in the 'Shake 'n' Vac' ads), John Hewer (Captain Birds Eye in the long-running ad campaign), Stuart Maconie, Peter Kay, Kate Thornton, Fay Weldon (once an advert creator), Chas and Dave (composers of music for Courage Best ad), director Hugh Hudson (Courage Best and British Airways ads), director Paul Weiland, Linda Smith, cultural historian Robert Hewison, William Franklyn (Schweppes ads), ad executive John Webster, Henry McGee (Sugar Puffs ads), cultural commentator Philip Dodd, ad writer Barry Day, Sharon Maughan (actress in Nescafe Gold Blend ads), Michael Mayne, John Cornelius and Simon Desborough (all Milky Bar Kids throughout run of the advert campaign), Deborah Leng (model from the Flake ads), Berny Stringle (director of PG Tips chimps ads), set designer David Bill (work includes the PG Tips and Cadbury's Smash ads), Mary Holland (Katie in the first Oxo family ads), Ricky Gervais, Linda Neary (actress in the Coca-Cola 'We'd Like To Teach The World To Sing' ad), Jonathan Glazer (director of Nike ad and the winning Guinness ad), Terry Lovelock (director of Cinzano ads with Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins), Nick Park (director/animator of Heat Electric ads) and Dr. David Lewis, who explains how some adverts work better than others, including the famous 1950s 'Strand' campaign. The number one ad was the Guinness surfing ad.