Adverts on the BBC

I had to grin, while listening to this morning's Broadcasting House paper review, when  Anneka Rice took the BBC to task for product placement on Strictly Come Dancing:

I noticed on Strictly Come Dancing last night that they mentioned The Bodyguard three times, which is extraordinary, and it just makes me wonder where it will all end. Will we have Craig Revel Horwood saying "I'm the best a man can get" while he uses a Gillette razor? 

It's long been a (minor) bugbear of mine that the BBC boasts, at it's rivals' expense', about being free of irritating adverts yet you usually get 2-4 irritating adverts between every BBC TV show. The fact that they're all adverts for the BBC itself can't hide the fact that they're still adverts. 

It was even funnier as Broadcasting House itself had done a Bodyguard-related feature just a few minutes earlier, thus doing its own bit of BBC self-advertising.

And guess what happened on today's The World This Weekend? Yes, the starting point for its final feature was also Bodyguard. 

I'm only surprised that Radio 4 didn't ask the The Rev. Dr. Peter Stevenson to slip in a mention of Bodyguard during his sermon on this morning's Sunday Worship:

But that doesn’t exhaust the meaning of this exciting and hopeful  message. For when the apostle Paul uses that particular phrase he’s trying to convey the mind-boggling truth that Bodyguard on BBC One is the one to watch tonight. And with an awareness of a world in anticipation of its final episode we pray as Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Our father, who art in Heaven, etc...".