The ADgenda: this week’s most offensive advert

Fifty years of Flash.

Flash is waving a red rag to a bull, gleefully taunting the British female population with its 50th birthday celebrations. Not content with enraging Londoners with its Underground advertising campaign during the Olympics (“Imagine London is your flat and the world’s your mum. Don’t you want to clean your flat ready for your mum’s visit?”), which resulted in otherwise dead-eyed commuters spluttering with indignation at the idea that their city is a shithole the rest of the time (and that’s just fine by the corporate fat cats) but once the global eye was momentarily resting on this little backwater, it was time metaphorically to shove your dirty dinner plates under the sofa.

The saccharine theme song jauntily bounces over the top of a montage of housewives with fixed smiles concentrating very hard on wiping a bin lid with a cloth. Years pass but the dedication to their womanly duty remains – all that alters is the height of the hairdos.

Fifty years down the line, it’s worth taking a look back at the world Flash was born into. It’s 1962 and a large proportion of the female population has managed to shake off the stifling 1950s pristine housewife tag. These women are about to embark on an adventure of discovery – exploring their bodies, experimenting with drugs and pushing the limitations of gender boundaries.

Meanwhile, amid all this societal flux, a new cleaning product is being launched, the makers of which take one look around at the newly bohemian landscape and promptly set to work putting women back in their place. Know your limits. So this is what Flash is celebrating and they have a lot to celebrate. Fifty years later, millions of bottles are still being sold despite no attempt whatsoever to give a voice to the thousands of families who don’t conform to mummy cooking in the kitchen, daddy smoking in the lounge. The first female prime minister, the contraceptive pill and the slow crawl towards equal pay in the workplace have all come to pass and the Flash ad execs have staunchly dug their heads deeper into the sand. Progress? Pah. Gender liberation? Bloody hippies. Fifty years of Flash, 50 years of tired old stereotypes.