Last week, I was home alone, drunk and hungry. After a half-hearted rifle through the fridge/freezer, it became clear that only one thing was going to satisfy me. So I got a taxi to the McDonald's drive thru. And I'm not ashamed.
McDonald's has always been part of my life. In 1984, I went on a school trip to the Natural History Museum which ended with a visit to one of the few McDonald's restaurants in the UK. To a 12-year-old boy, this was more exciting than the skeleton of a Brontosaurus, it was the highlight of the day. I lived in Swindon, the closest thing I ever got to classic American cuisine was when Robbie Pratt's Dad did a barbecue for his birthday and stuck a half-cooked Bejam burger between two pieces of white sliced. Naturally, the prospect of a bona fide beefburger from the USA was super-exciting even if it did have sliced gherkins in it.
Now I'm a grown-up, I treat myself to a Big Mac once a week. It's been a mainstay in my diet for the last 25 years. I'm all too aware of the scare-mongering Super-Size-Me health warnings but I don't care, I'm happy to put up with a few extra pounds to keep this 'lovin' it' affair alive. Yet something is making it harder and harder for me to stomach them these days. It's not their unsound business practices, it's not the scars on the roof of my mouth from the white-hot apple pie filling, it's not even the acne on the two-stars on the tills…
It's the current advertising campaign. It makes me mad.
Their current spot is the story of two parallel lives, an older white gentleman and a black yoof. We follow them doing the same tasks but with different spins - oldie listens to a crackly old gramophone, yoof to tinny dubstep on his smartphone, oldie pulls his braces up, yoof's jeans hang below his booty, oldie shoots a game of pool, yoof shoots a rival gang member - only joking - but you get what's going on by now. They live in the same neighbourhood but they are worlds apart. Never the twain shall meet. But there is one thing that straddles this huge cultural and generational gulf and it's a beef patty in a bun. It's not Jesus or Allah at work here, it's our Lord and Saviour, Ronald McDonald.
Both the yoof and the oldie are sat a table away from each other. As they both bite down on some Frenchly-fried reconstituted potato, their eyes meet and a friendly smile of acknowledgement passes between them that wouldn't be out of place in a Match.com advert. It's a look so alien that even the lovely middle-class actors portraying these men have a job to find their motivation. This kind of contact barely happens in a supervised victim/criminal mediation meeting, to suggest it could happen under the harsh lights of a burger bar is ridiculous.
Admittedly, this doesn't irk me as much as their previous ad where the mum selfishly moves her boyfriend into the family home against her teenage son's wishes. Cue awkward scenes of New Dad trying to bond with reluctant boy. Music fails. Sport fails. Dad's free taxi service fails. New Dad is exasperated until he mutters something about Maccy D's and the boy immediately transforms into the perfect son as they laugh over a Happy Meal. It really is that easy.
When did McDonald's become a social worker? I don't want their take on the human condition, I was happy with the Justin-Timberlake-soundtracked slo-mo shots of sizzling beef and crisp lettuce falling onto a bouncing bun. They're selling burgers not the meaning of life.
Is it necessary to point out that we 'all have McDonald's in common'? The clarification that I have something in common with the swathes of chavs that hang there is enough to make me defect to the Gourmet Burger Kitchen.
The lure of the Big Mac is hanging by a thin string of melted cheese. I love you McDonald's but I want you to show me your juicy burgers not your ham-fisted attempts at humanitarianism. What are you serving up in this campaign next? The Syria Conflict being resolved with Chicken McNuggets? Go on, I dare you.
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