The Vauxhall Griffin

Summer 1973 Vauxhall Griffin advert (click to play)

We were working out of the office, auditing the books of a small Vauxhall dealer in Selby. The owner enthusiastically suggested we watch out for the new Vauxhall advert showing for the first time that evening on television. So we did.

The next day the owner was seething.

“Did you see it last night? Bloody awful! I don’t know how they expect that to sell any cars. A big puffy bloke leaping around in tights! Who the hell’s going to buy a Vauxhall after that?”

Watching again now I can see what he meant. This dubious Jack-in-the-Green-type character, loitering behind bushes in what looks like the gardens of a crematorium, seems the kind of guy who might have difficulty in passing a DBS check. What on earth were Vauxhall thinking?

Along with lots of other dealers, the owner was straight on the phone to complain and the ad was pulled within the week. I never thought I’d see it again. Vauxhall must surely have tried to erase it permanently from the history books. Yet like all things embarrassing, it has resurfaced on the internet. Perhaps they should get in touch with the actor, whoever he is, and get him to have it removed under the right to be forgotten.

Afterword: members of the neo-millenial generation tend to like the ad. They find the griffin no less disagreeable than the meerkats, dogs or opera singers of today’s insurance ads, and the catchphrase “Like me!” fairly memorable. They seem to find nothing untoward about the character at all. Yet to many of the commentators on YouTube he is camp and scary. He reminds me of the effeminate comedian Larry Grayson who before the nineteen-seventies had been considered too outrageous for television. It must be a generational thing. Although, actually, now I’ve watched the ad about a dozen times I’m beginning to like it. Perhaps it was ahead of its time: “Like me!”