Vorderman doesn't add up

That deeply unpleasant woman, Carol Vorderman, has seen fit to publicise her views on mathematics teaching. Apparently she believes, or says she believes, that everybody in school should study maths until the age of eighteen. On behalf of my sixteen-year-old self (I was one once, though admittedly this was a long time ago) I shuddered at this suggestion. Strangely enough, I have retained the greater part of the mathematics I struggled with so long ago.

But why should we take the opinions of a TV presenter seriously? And why, in particular, should we pay heed to Vorderman? Her doubtful claim to fame is based on her time as front woman of Countdown, a daytime TV show, but I remember her better as the front woman for a loan company's advertisements. Her job was to give this usurer some kind of credence, and to pretend that the extortionate repayment rates added up.

In the magazine-based predecessor to Stray Blogs, Stray Thoughts, I identified Vorderman as one of the three most ill-matched people to jobs. The others were Tony Blair as 'peace ambassador' in the Middle East and Jeffrey Archer as a 'TV jurist'. Would we take anything they said seriously? I hope not.

Advertising Oscars

There should definitely be the equivalent of an Oscar ceremony for TV advertisers. Some of the awards I'd like to make for 2011 are: MOST POINTLESS ADVERTISEMENT The AVIVA ad that starts with someone trapped in a call centre singing 'ISA, ISA, ISA', would be the clear winner here. You can see that the creative genius behind this is the same one responsible for changing the name of NORWICH UNION to the present one, probably shared with a thousand joke or tourist souvenir shops somewhere. MOST AUDACIOUS ADVERTISEMENT You've got to admire the sheer effrontery of WONGA.COM. They call themselves something like 'Alternative Loans Provider of the Year' and then breathtakingly put interest rates exceeding 4,000% APR up front. MOST UNAPPEALING AVERTISEMENT This would be a close-run contest. In the frame would be the diseased mind responsible for the DOMESTOS rubber-sucker germs. But the eventual winner would be the creator of the woman-icon for CONFUSED.COM. This must have lost them a lot of sales. Should they change their name to BEMUSED.COM? Fancy letting themselves be beaten by a fat opera-singer annoyingly singing 'GO COMPARE'. There IS intelligent life in the universe. It's just that there's not much of it in the advertising industry.