Celebrity adverts

Ad companies are well known for liking to indulge themselves at the expense of their clients, so the ad agency for Norwich Union must have been clearing off the mantelpiece for the award before they even got the OK to make their latest TV ad.

Norwich Union is changing its name, and so to 'celebrate', they have hired not one, not two, but FIVE top stars who've done the same to tell us about the fact. So we see Ringo Starr, Alice Copper, Dame Edna Everage AND Elle Macpherson talking about how they changed their name before becoming famous.

But the best 'sleb of all is Bruce 'Bruno' Willis, who appears as his modern bearded self as a passenger next to his character John McClane driving a cab across Central Park in the famous scene from 'Die Hard: With a Vengeance'. Not only is he digitally inserted into the taxi (ker-ching), the ad company must have also bought the rights to use the scene from 20th Century Fox (ker-ching), but also obviously pay Bruce to appear as well.

It's all potentially memorable, if only by NU's cash-strapped customers watching agog as their premium for next year is splashed up their living room wall.

And advertising agencies all seem to be strip-mining the same easy seam lately, realising that chucking some money at a famous face is easier that coming up with an original concept.

So we've got Samuel L Jackson flogging Virgin Broadband (again, after Uma Thurman also did it), and, umm, weatherbint Sian Williams, Rolf Harris and Roy Walker facing up against an imaginary animated nodding dog for Churchill Insurance. But the worst has got to be Iggy Pop - yes, Iggy Pop - flailing around and talking about 'accessing his documents online' or something for Swift Insurance. What a twunt.

It used to be the Hollywood A-list stars only did ads in Japan, like Michael J Fox flogging instant noodles or Tina Turner chugging peach tea where they thought no-one could see them, but now it seems someone opened the floodgates and forgot to close the damn things again.