Push The Courvoisier

When I worked in The Academy I ran the bar in the basement (Academy 2) and Andy, a tiny Chinese bloke who spent more time fixing his hair before we opened then I did, ran the VIP bar on the top floor. The VIP bar literally had every drink known to mankind, and Andy used to display them meticulously on the glass shelves behind the bar. For the year and a half that I worked there, most of the bottles were never even opened, or were so rare that it'd cost too much to serve one drink from them. But Andy's prized possession, was a bottle of Campari, that he used to put on the top shelf, front and centre.

If you don't know, Campari is a widely available, inexpensive drink that tastes like piss mixed with petrol. It'd be classed as "bitters", as opposed to spirits or liquors. It took me a long time to figure out exactly what it was, and why Andy was having a passionate love affair with it. I went to my Dad, and he explained what it was and then pulled a bottle of it out of the back of the drinks cabinet (when I say 'drinks cabinet', I mean, the press in my parents house where they keep the cereal, biscuits, tin foil, pots and pans and a few bottles of drink).

After finding out exactly what it was (the off-run of herbs soaked in spirits, with a bit of red dye thrown in for funsies), and that not only did it taste awful, and that it was hardly the next Courvoisier (yes, as in "pass the..") I made Andy try it and he promptly removed it from the top shelf and flung it back to the back of the drinks press where it belongs.

Whenever I see Campari, I always think of Andy's facial expression when he tried it, like I'd made him eat shit by telling him it was chocolate.

Shameless Product Placement

When I was a kid, my sister pointed out a Kylie Minogue video that was sponsored by Impulse, and to a lesser extent, a sporty clothing line. (LocoMotion video if you're looking it up) Yes Impulse, the body spray. It's actually hilarious, there's just random shots of cans of Impulse throughout the video. Ever since I saw that, I've always found product placement in videos really funny.

Which brings me to my LULZ of the day. I was too lazy to change the channel when Lady GaGa's video for 'Love Game' came on, and I noticed a shameless Campari campaign running through the video (it's a bit hard not to notice, they may as well have run a banner across the bottle of the screen saying "drink Campari, it's not that bad!"). I thought surely, there must be some sort of campaign for Campari, and why am I the last person to hear about it? But it appears that few people have noticed the product placement and Jessica Alba is still Campari's poster-girl.

Once blog that did notice however was 'Alcademics, The Study Of Booze With Camper English', saying

"The new Lady Gaga video has some unusual Campari product placement, in that they seem to be enjoying it in an underground station while Lady Gaga, with her usual aversion to wearing pants, waves a light-up Gandalf-style staff around.

Campari, the choice of subway disco wizards since 1860"

Mega Lolz.