Name: Charlie’s Bar, Enniskillen.
Age: Nearly 80. The venue opened in 1944.
Appearance: Classic pub: lots of wood, roaring fire, dogs.
Sounds nice, but isn’t it a bit early to start daytime drinking? It’s not Christmas yet. Possibly, but it’s never too early for a full-throated seasonal sob, and that’s what this pub in Northern Ireland is offering with its new Christmas advert, which many viewers have declared this year’s best. In comments under the video on TikTok, John Lewis wrote: “We’re not crying, you are” using a tearful emoji.
Hang on, pubs make Christmas ads? Everyone is doing video now, from undertakers to estate agents; your builder has probably gone viral dancing to Ariana Grande. If you’re not building cross platform engagement with compelling visual storytelling, what exactly are you doing?
Pulling pints, maybe? But go on, tell me about this ad. OK – tissues at the ready?
I’ve had a cold since mid-September; obviously I’ve got tissues. You’d be better off watching it, but basically, a sad-looking elderly gentleman goes to lay flowers on a grave, then is ignored by young folk he tries to be polite to. He goes into Charlie’s Bar, where he gets a warm welcome and a young couple and their cheeky little dog befriend him. The soundtrack is Birdy’s weepy People Help the People and it ends with a Yeats quote about strangers being friends you haven’t met yet.
It does sound better than this year’s overwrought offerings: I’m genuinely confused by the Aldi carrot one. Yes, the seasonal emotional arms race does produce some, well … turkeys. Boots want us to buy Santa compression stockings and I’m supposed to have feelings for John Lewis’s Venus flytrap? Unsatisfactory.
But how could Charlie’s Bar afford to make a Christmas ad? Retailers spend millions every year, don’t they? I don’t know why they bother – Charlie’s masterpiece was made for £700 on an iPhone. Its star, Martin McManus, 73, is a member of an amateur theatre group and local couple Meagan Daley and Alex Middlemass and their dog Missy also feature.
Wow, I should put Charlie’s Bar in charge of my Christmas shopping. Yes, they’ve shown what you can do on a budget: the shoestring production has had more than 500,000 views on TikTok since it was released on Friday and received plaudits from Derry Girls writer Lisa McGee. Most comments on the video are along the lines of “sobbing”, “bawling” or “this broke me”.
That’s amazing but I don’t know why all these ads assume we want to cry at Christmas. Seriously? Who doesn’t want to cry at Christmas?
Do say: “There are no strangers here, only friends you haven’t yet met.”
Don’t say: “The dog is playing badly with urban geriatric millennials; have any of the locals got a capybara?”
