Dom Davis (The Blog)

So Specsavers decided that they would use Postman Pat for one of their advertising campaigns. The storyline, such that it is, is that Pat accidentally sits on his glasses and then proceeds to drive off trying to deliver the post but, ultimately, failing.

What could be wrong with using Postman Pat you ask? Nothing… you’d think. After all this is a children’s TV character. What could be more innocent than that? Well lets look at the facts shall we.

Pat sits on and breaks his glasses while getting into his van. So far so good. Pat then proceeds to drive off, not noticing that Jess, his black and white cat, is still on the bonnet of the van. He hits a road sign, leaves the road, crashes through a fence, then a brick wall before he looses the Jess (thankfully she seems unharmed) driving through a garden. The next scene shows Pat picking up a bag of vegetables instead of the bag of post and he then goes on to try to deliver said vegetables. Pat is last seen driving off after hitting a sign.

Ignoring, for the moment, that glasses could correct any kind of vision defect that would cause you to fail to notice a cat in your field of view, or mistake a bag of vegetables for a bag of post, Pat should have been aware of the fact that his eyesight was poor. As an upstanding citizen he would have reported the fact to the DVLA and would be issued with a driving license that would require him to wear glasses to drive. Pat ignores this and proceeds to drive while being unable to see. He then fails to stop at a number of accidents after causing hundred, if not thousands of pounds of damage.

Next, one has to question this persons lucidity. Regardless of if you could see or not, the act of striking road signs, fences and brick walls with a vehicle has got to be noticeable. One has to be criminally negligent, or on something, to fail to notice these events. This goes doubly for posting vegetables through a persons letter box. You could argue that the two sacks containing the vegetables and the letters were similar but when it comes to the contents their not even the same shape. To have a postman who is either so off his face, or who cares so little about his job so as not to notice that what he is holding is a large spherical object and not a thin rectangular one is just beyond comprehension.

Finally, given Pats complete inability to see anything, let alone read, coupled with the fact that the vegetables are not addressed how does he know which letter boxes he should be posting things through? He can’t, he’s just randomly distributing the contents of his bags.

So we have a criminally negligent, possibly high person who has broken a number of laws, destroyed property and woefully failed at his job being used as a spokes person for a company. I don’t know about them but I’d be distancing myself from Pat as soon as I could. I’m pretty sure that once the police become aware of the (readily available) evidence that Pat will be facing prosecution, not to mention the loss of his job.

There must be something about the Antipodes and the way that pretty much everything there wants to kill you (especially in Australia) that produces the likes of Steve Irwin (nutcase who used to pick up snakes while telling the audience just how many people a single drop of venom could kill – now dead) and The Lion Man (the nutcase currently on TV).

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m smart enough to realise that big cats, no matter how hand reared and friendly, are great fun to play with right up until the point that they get bored of you. You’ve seen house cats. They roll on their backs, do the whole friendly ‘lets play’ thing and are a big bundle of cute fluff right up until they get bored, the claws come out and they try to take off your hand. That’s a domesticated cat that’s much smaller than you. What happens when a big cat does that? Death. That’s what happens. But no, this bloke is playing football with lions, including Savannah; “…his favourite lion and the one most likely to turn on him”. Lets just revisit that shall we: “…the one most likely to turn on him”. So he knows there’s a chance they might decide to stop being friendly and, in a fight, my money is with the fully grown lion.

His wife seems to have slightly more brains as she’s decided that going into the enclosure to play football is not up there with the world most sensible ideas, then changes her mind, goes in, gets scared (really can’t blame her) and makes a quick exit.

I love big cats, I love watching them and photographing them, but most of all I love the sturdy fence between me and them. Lets just hope that the Lion Man doesn’t end up as Lion Food.