So I was looking through my TV guide to discover that Hell’s Kitchen returns on Easter Monday, but with a few changes to Marco’s menu.  Acerbic Angus Deayton exits the dining room after many reported rows with the fearsome chef, who at one point apparently stared into Deayton’s eyes saying, “Angus, the eyes you look at are the eyes that watched my mother die”.  Who writes his dialogue, hire them immediately!

His more  easy-on-the-eye replacement, is to be Claudia Winkleman, quick-stepping from  Strictly Come Dancing and passing over Cat Dealy who was also in the running but stayed in LA,  perhaps fearing a glance from the chef’s demonic eyes as his knives were being sharpened.  But in the future, Marco may not be supplying his own knives.

Over the past few months, various government departments have been discussing the lifting of the UK’s ban on product placement on TV. Product placement being where manufacturers pay to have their product subtly placed on a TV show.   Michael Grade may have been dreaming of seeing branded bitter in The Rover’s, along with the £72m or so, that various product placements would bring to ITV over the year.  A big dent in their huge debt and a big help to their drop in advertising. It was all going so well until a couple of weeks ago he bit-down on his cigar as the Department Of Culture revealed the ban would stay, to be reviewed in 2011.  ITV’s response is that it seems ok for viewers to see product placement in shows made outside the UK but not in home grown product.

In the US, shows thrive on product placement.  American Idol for example has Coca-Cola logos on the judges cups, while 24 is a great place to spot Apple computers and Jack Baur’s Ford Expedition. Indeed in the first three months of 2008 there were over 118,000 placements across America’s 11 main TV channels.

In dramas and movies of course, the set has to reflect the real world.  You can’t have a store selling, ‘Soda-Pop’, ‘Light Beer’ and ‘Kornflakes’ and it’s unlikely The Italian Job could have been pulled-off with Cortinas.  It’s generally the job of the set decorator and prop master to decide what goes on the set, these days it’s also becoming part of the producer’s job to negotiate a good deal.

Quantum Of Solace became a recent record breaker attracting £50m worth of placements, second only to  Die Another Day at £45m, said to be so crammed it resembled an up-market Argos catalogue.

One of the first big exploiters of product placement was ET in 1981 where ET munches on Reeses Pieces, Spielberg originally wanted to have M&M’s but M&M’s weren’t calling home.   It opened the floodgates to producers and corporations alike who, under a breath of realisation said, “Hang on, wait a minute…”

Director David Lynch on the other hand, thinks the whole idea is, B******T.

Hitchcock of course was his own brand, and placed himself in his own product.  He made fleeting, often missed  appearances in all his movies, when his fans cottoned-on they’d sit in anticipation ready to whisper, “There he is!”

Of more recent movies, Iron Man is a treasure trove of goodies but interestingly, fans enjoyed the trailer so much they were concerned it was going to be made into a full length feature as shown in this news report.

Which brings me to Wilson.  Tom Hank’s home-made friend, and co-star in Cast Away, AKA Fed Ex The Movie.  I’m so glad I fell asleep at this movie in front of £3 DVD and not holding a £10 cinema ticket.  Hanks fashioned Wilson out of a volleyball by the manufacturer of the same name.  Fed Ex apparently received no product placement fee for the movie and were at first concerned that it would give the company a bad image, but went ahead as it had a positive outcome.

So whether it’s just set decoration, free set decoration or paid-for set decoration, sometimes product placement is so obvious it’s irritating. In that case maybe we should have a warning saying, “Look away now”, but then you’d miss the entire first ten minutes of I Robot.