Mr. T hates trees!

I made the mistake of giving my girlfriend control of the television remote for a brief period on Sunday. Within seconds it was on the 'Painting and Drying Channel' which is clearly beyond parody. Then we were watching an infomercial on a channel somewhere in the late 600s. They were advertising some kind of see-through oven and had hired the services of Mr.T to help explain it to us. Mr.T is on about 20% of adverts at the moment. He is either a fan of a great number of different products or simply happy to whore himself to the hundreds of advertising execs who earn their money by saying -

"Guys, guys, what if...? Now bare with me on this... what if...? Jesus, I'm good... What if... we got Mr. T to advertise it?"

"Woah, woah, woah! Mr. T from the A Team?"

"Yeah. We could, like, get him to say, like, 'You'd be a FOOL not to buy Gaviscon!"

"Danny, you're amaaaazing! Consider your salary justified!"

It is important that I let you know, as I have proven on a handful of occasions, I am perfectly willing to 'whore' myself in adverts. The fact is that adverts pay big chunks of money for very little work and therefore only a dickhead (or someone with integrity) would turn them down.

This blog was going to be about the fact that Mr. T is still known as Mr. T although that was just the name of a character he played in a TV show 25 years ago. I was going to make jokes around the premise that Ian McShane still called himself Lovejoy. Then I did some research and discovered/remembered that Mr. T is in fact the name of the actor and the character was called B.A Baracus. Now I am lumbered with a blog with no discernible direction. The parallels with my career are striking.

Someone told me on Sunday night that Mr. T owned a huge estate outside of Chicago with hundreds of oak trees on it's grounds. He then decided that he hated trees and got rid of them all, upsetting the local residents. I have since googled this and the story can safely be upgraded from pub anecdotal evidence to 'true' - he did do it. I now have an image of Mr. T roaming the grounds of his property ripping trees from the ground with his bare hands and shouting 'Mr. T hates trees!'. He would only stop from time to time to yell advertising slogans at passing camera crews.

One point worth making (is it?) is that I don't think I've seen Mr. T do anything but advertise things for over 20 years. That means that there is a whole generation that only know him as the 'black guy on telly who shouts about Snickers/World of Warcraft/that oven thingy'. To them he is just an American Barry Scott. To his credit, what Mr. T has done is created an instantly recognisable image. I will be working on my own over the coming months. How about policeman's hat, wet suit, Dr Martins?

The smarter amongst you will have noticed, to prove what a sick world this is, I have included an image of Nancy Reagan sat on Mr. T's lap. As I understand it, she sat on his lap to distract him from the tree behind him. Any sexual activities that may or may not have happened after this photo was taken are between them. And as for the video below - she's right, he could have used the door knob...