I love Top Gear.

There. I said it. I love Top Gear.

I can’t explain this in any plausible terms. I just happen to be insanely entertained by the stuff three greying middle aged car-fetishist blokes get up too. I grin with glee at their stunts, I laugh moronically at their jokes, and I allow myself quite consciously to be duped into believing that all of their hilarious mishaps, which are without exception quite blatantly set up, have actually happened completely spontaneously.

I even manage to mute myself from shouting at the TV when Jeremy Clarkson is speaking – a man who’s political views are the diametric opposite to my own. I regularly rant at the TV when other people of equal idiocy but much less vitriolic, twisted and depressingly reactionary views are given a platform to spew them into my living room. Yet when Clarkson is elaborating his latest mindless bollocks, I don’t rant and rave at the TV like a speaker at a trade union rally. I just smile softly and sigh in forgiving resignation, much in the same way a parent would were one of their beloved offspring to ask some ridiculous question like ‘Why isn’t the number 11 pronounced onety-one?’

We can all forgive juvenile misguidance, after all. No, not even Jeremy Clarkson – a walking, talking Daily Mail – can put me off watching that show.

So, there you go. I love Top Gear. And as far as choosing a programme to love goes, I’ve chosen pretty well: its a well known contemporary fact that, since the creation of the TV channels Dave and BBC 3 and the proliferation of YouTube there is no longer such a thing as a moment in time when it isn’t possible to watch one of its 18,273 episodes.

But… Then there’s a but. It hasn’t escaped my attention, and it can scarcely have missed yours, that Top Gear on Dave is now accompanied by a sponsor. Previously it was Halfords, who managed to make my blood boil with their own brand of irritating adverts, involving a silhouetted do-gooder employee helping a young child with his bike (to which the impatient little shit persistently asks ‘Is it ready yet?’. As a child, I was frequently given remarkably painful clips around the legs for much less abrupt impatience); a kindly gent who needs his head lights fixing (and who cracks the eternally hilarious quip ‘They’ll see me home’ upon their successful illumination); and a woman who needs help rigging her iPod to her car, only to be embarrassed when Republica’s Baby I’m Ready To Go plays out, hence protesting ‘Oh… it isn’t all like that, honest!’ (and to which our Halfords silhouette suck up responds ‘Yeah right’. The massive flirting featureless div).

Halfords sought to ruin my hourly Top Gear fixes, and alas they broadly succeeded. It was therefore to much delight on my part that they were not too recently removed from the shows sponsorship, I can only imagine following the receipt of tens of thousands of angry complaints, a sharp dip in viewing figures and a number of referrals to the Press Complaints Commission under the charge of ‘Shit Advertising’.

But alas, reprieve was short lived. For Halford’s replacement as ‘sponsors of motoring on Dave’ was an altogether different, and alas, a more potent finger twitchingly annoying beast: WeBuyAnyCar.com.

Its almost as if the advertisers over at WeBuyAnyCar.com had a brainwave one day, and said ‘Lets make the most annoying fucking adverts we can possibly make, and get Dave to screen them 8 times an hour. People will then flock to our website, and flog us their motors, and perhaps even make kindly donations to our worldly cause!’ I can’t figure out the logic of this. But alas, assuming their aim was to make said most annoying adverts ever, they have succeeded triumphantly.

The adverts are mind numbingly bland in design and glib in concept. Invariably they feature a heavily stereotyped singing buffoon who croons the words ‘WeBuyAnyCar.com sponsors motoring on Dave’ to background music of a genre broadly matching their costume. That’s it. That’s the entire script for every advert. It hardly took days chewing pencils and scrunching up bits of paper to work that one out did it (and if it did, they should have employed someone with GCSEs and a mental capacity greater than that of a small sparrow).

Yet the execution is spectacular in its sheer capacity to dim your cerebrum. One of the characters appears to be some form of cheesy pop artist – a Lemar, perhaps – who is pursued mid-sentence by an angry farmer on a motorised lawn mower growling ‘Git aaaaaarf muy laaahnd’ (surely the whole of Somerset has cause to mobilise en masse against such outrageous typecast – which itself must be a formidable sight, what with all the pitchforks and scarecrows and tractors they’d be able to employ as armoury). Another is a girl wearing pink pyjamas and Ugg boots – because that’s what all girls wear isn’t it? – who pops annoyingly around the screen. Yet another is a heavy metal rocker, allegedly. And a fourth is apparently a Country’n’Western hillbilly who is lassoo’d mid-croon.

My fury knows no bounds when I am forced to sit through just 10 seconds of these ridiculous adverts, which tragically have to happen 7 or 8 times during a one hour Top Gear sitting. You see, I’ve got nothing against advertising per-se. Ok, so I do resent the broad aims of advertising which, as far as I can tell, are rooted in blatant misrepresentation. But honestly, I do appreciate a good advert. Indeed, I even think good adverts can be quite an art form, on a par with any good short film. I would gladly watch them over and over again, and only hope they are a success. I therefore compel you to drink Guinness by the bucket full, such is their majestic advertising record. I further urge you to drive a Honda, I implore you to buy your furniture at Ikea, and whatever you do, never stop eating Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

But please, hear this appeal: If you want to sell your car, do not – and I repeat and stress with not a little angst – DO NOT sell your car via WeBuyAnyCar.com.

‘But Adam’, I hear my hoards of eager readers cry, ‘by writing this very piece are you not simply advertising said website? Was that not the aim of their annoying advertising in the first place – to annoy, and thus stick in the mind of the unsuspecting angry viewer?’

You are right, of course. But alas, I have one final plea: If you really must sell your car on such a website – I mean, if you really can’t be arsed flogging your wheels through AutoTrader or Loot and getting what its really worth, and would rather take the less lucrative but alas easy, no-hassle option of an instant sale website – then please do consider any of the following alternatives to WeBuyAnyCar.com:

http://www.sellcar-uk.com; http://www.wewillbuyyourcar.com; or even http://www.ebay.co.uk.

The only way we can fight back against such poor standards of blood boiling, skin crawling advertising is to unite as one and boycott those organisations who’s advertising strategy is to employ morons to treat us like idiots. Only then will we see the last of the very worst, most annoying adverts. Only then will we banish forever from our screens the feintest rapped whisper of ‘We buy any car’.

Only then will I be able to watch Top Gear in total comfort. Unite with me comrades, for tomorrow we shall rule the world!