TV adverts - the good, the bad and the most complained about 2016

Television adverts - which ones do you remember best?

For me, it's the good - the Guinness surfer ad, the Scotch videotape skeleton singing a version of The Rolling Stones' Not Fade Away, the Cadbury's drumming gorilla, for example.

Then there's the cheesy selection - step forward Shake 'n' Vac with its irresistibly catch song the words of which I can recall to this day, or Maureen Lipman's Beattie ads for BT ('You got an ology!').

Then the downright annoying - 'washing machines live longer with Calgon' immediately springs to mind.

And of course the scary - I can still remember the falling tombstones from the Government AIDS Don't Die Of Ignorance advert of the 1980s.  It was designed to shock and it certainly did.

Which leads me to the most complained about to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in 2016 - perhaps surprisingly, topping the list are the Moneysupermarket adverts featuring Gary the dancing bodyguard, Dave the twerking businessman and Colin the dancing builder.

But even though they received the most complaints, the ASA has ruled that none of them crossed the line from bad taste to offence.  What a fine line that is, and a subjective one at that! 

In all honesty, they don't really bother me that much but aren't they just a bit passé now?  Dave was quite amusing when he first appeared, but now with the rival gangs doing a dance off, I can't really see the relevance to the products that they're trying to sell.

But maybe that's not the point - if people are talking about them, and complaining about them, then the company's perhaps happy with the 'there's no such thing as bad publicity' angle.

Don't you just long for the days of the clever advert though, the ones that made you think, or amused you, rather than annoyed you and make you wish you could fast-forward through them.  No wonder many people now watch TV on catch-up or on other services which allow them to skip the advertising.