How to Get Ahead in Advertising Quotes

How to Get Ahead in Advertising is a television show that was first aired in 1970 . How to Get Ahead in Advertising ended in 1970.

It features David Wimbury as producer, Lord David Dundas; Rick Wentworth in charge of musical score, and Peter Hannan as head of cinematography.

How to Get Ahead in Advertising is recorded in English/German and originally aired in United Kingdom. Each episode of How to Get Ahead in Advertising is 94 min long. How to Get Ahead in Advertising is distributed by Warner Bros. (USA).

The cast includes: Richard E. Grant as Denis Dimbleby Bagley, John Shrapnel as Psychiatrist, Sean Bean as Larry Frisk, Rachel Ward as Julia Bagley, Jacqueline Tong as Penny Wheelstock, Richard Wilson as John Bristol, and Tony Slattery as Basil.

How to Get Ahead in Advertising Quotes

Rachel Ward as Julia Bagley

• (Rachel Ward) "Insanity? You still want to sell them boils."
• (Richard E. Grant) "Nothing crazy about that. It's a free market, people will either buy or they won't buy. Nobody's forcing them. Everyone knows what they're getting."
• (Rachel Ward) "Perhaps they don't."
• (Richard E. Grant) "Of course they do. People might be a bit greedy from time to time but we're not blind. We've got our eyes open, and we have a choice."
• (Rachel Ward) "Perhaps."
• (Richard E. Grant) "Stop saying perhaps. What's perhaps got to do with it?"
• (Rachel Ward) "Perhaps they don't."
• (Richard E. Grant) "Perhaps if they'd hanged Jesus Christ we'd all be kneeling in front of a f***ing gibbet."

John Shrapnel as Psychiatrist

• (John Shrapnel) "Tell me about advertising. Now, you resigned from a very important firm with a very highly-paid job. I'd like to know your reasons."
• (John Shrapnel) "Well, at least try and give me an example of even one of those reasons."
• (Richard E. Grant) "All right. Reason 1: advertising conspires with Big Brother."
• (John Shrapnel) "And you're afraid of Big Brother? Someone or something coming into your life and telling you what to do?"
• (Richard E. Grant) "No, I'm not afraid of him. I'm one of the few who really understands him. The man who conceived of Big Brother never knew what was coming down the line. Thought his filthy creation was gonna be watching us. But it is us who watch it. There's one in every living room. The montrous injustice of it is we stare at it of our own free will."
• (John Shrapnel) "So we could say principally that it's television that you blame."
• (Richard E. Grant) "We can say entirely it is the crooks who've infiltrated it that I blame. They've moved in on the greatest means of communication since the wheel, and now they've done it their greed is insatiable. They're cutting down jungles to breed hamburgers, turning the whole world into a car park. They'd sell off the sea to satisfy the needs of their great god Greed. But it won't be satisfied, not til we're squatting in one of it's f***ing hatchbacks on a motorway. But there isn't gonna be anywhere left to go, except in slow revolutions towards the crest of the next slag heap."

Richard E. Grant as Denis Dimbleby Bagley

• (Richard E. Grant) "We're living in a shop. The world is one magnificent f***ing shop. And if it hasn't got a price tag, it isn't worth having. There is no greater freedom than freedom of choice, and that's the difference between you and me, boil. I was brought up to believe in that, and so should you, but you don't. You don't want freedom, do you? You don't even want roads. God, I never want to go on another train as long as I live. Roads represent a fundamental right of man to have access to the good things in life. Without roads, established family favorites would become elitist delicacies. Potter's soap would be for the few. There'd be no more tea bags, no instant potatoes, no long life cream. There'd be no aerosols. Detergents would vanish. So would tinned spaghetti and baked beans with six frankfurters. The right to smoke one's chosen brand would be denied. Chewing gum would probably disappear, so would pork pies. Foot deodorizers would climax without hope of replacement. When the hydrolyzed monosodium glutamate reserves run out, food would rot in its packets. Jesus Christ, there wouldn't be any more packets. Packaging would vanish from the face of the Earth. But worst of all, there'd be no more cars. And more than anything, people love their cars. They have a right to them. They have to sweat all day in some stinking factory making disposable cigarette lighters or everlasting Christmas trees, by Christ, they're entitled to them. They're entitled to any innovation technology brings. Whether it's ten percent more of it or fifteen percent off of it, they're entitled to it. They're entitled to one of four important new ingredients. Why should anyone have to clean their teeth without important new ingredients? Why the hell shouldn't they have their CZT? How dare some smutty Marxist carbunkle presume to deny them it? They love their CZT. They want it, they need it, they positively adore it. And by Christ, while I've got air in my body they're going to get it. They're going to get it bigger and brighter and better. I'll put CZT in their margarine if necessary, shove vitamins in their toilet rolls. If happiness means the whole world standing on a double layer of foot deodorizers, I, Bagley, will see that they get them. I'll give them anything and everything they want. By God, I will. I shall not cease, till Jerusalem is builded here, on England's green and pleasant land."

• (Richard E. Grant) "Nobody in advertising wants to get rid of boils. They're good little money-spinners. All we want to do is offer hope of getting rid them, and that's where I'm blocked."

• (Richard E. Grant) "My grandfather was caught molesting a wallaby in a private zoo in 1919."
• (John Shrapnel) "A wallaby?"
• (Richard E. Grant) "It may have been a kangaroo. I'm not sure."
• (John Shrapnel) "You mean sexually?"
• (Richard E. Grant) "I suppose so. He had his hand in its pouch."

• (Richard E. Grant) "You bastard. I only have one wish, that I could be awake to see you lanced. I'd like to see the knife going in. I'd like to see you suffer."
• (Voice of the Boil) "A typically communist statement."
• (Richard E. Grant) "I'm not a communist."
• (Voice of the Boil) "Yes, you are, you want to take everyone's car away."
• (Richard E. Grant) "I do not want to take anything from anyone. I want to give them the choice of something better."
• (Voice of the Boil) "Oh yes? What?"
• (Richard E. Grant) "Trains."
• (Voice of the Boil) "Trains? Trains are no good, they're old fashioned. I hate trains, they're rotten."
• (Richard E. Grant) "Only because they don't consume. Only because they were already there and don't eat up more and more and more. That's why you hate them. That's why government hates them. That's why they're old fashioned and rotten."
• (Voice of the Boil) "You Commies don't half talk a lot of s***."

• (Businessman on Train) "I see the police have made another lightning raid. Paddington drug orgy."
• (Priest on Train) "I suppose young girls was involved?"
• (Businessman on Train) "One discovered naked in a kitchen. Breasts smeared with peanut butter. "The police took away a bag containing 15 grams of cannibis resin. It may also have contained a quantity of heroin.""
• (Richard E. Grant) "Or a pork pie."
• (Businessman on Train) "I beg your pardon?"
• (Richard E. Grant) "I said the bag may also have contained a pork pie."
• (Businessman on Train) "I hardly see how a pork pie's got anything to do with it."
• (Richard E. Grant) "All right then, what about a large turnip? It may also have contained a big turnip."
• (Priest on Train) "The bag was full of drugs."
• (Richard E. Grant) "Nonsense."
• (Priest on Train) "The bag was full of drugs, it says so."
• (Richard E. Grant) "The bag could have been full of anything. Pork pies, turnips, oven parts. It's the oldest trick in the book."
• (Priest on Train) "What book?"
• (Richard E. Grant) "The distortion of truth by association book. The word is "may". You all believe heroin was in the bag because cannibis resin was in the bag. The bag may have contained heroin, but the chances are 100 to 1 certain that it didn't."
• (Businessman on Train) "A lot more likely than what you say."
• (Richard E. Grant) "About as likely as a tit spread with peanut butter."
• (Businessman on Train) "Do you mind?"
• (Priest on Train) "The tit was spread with peanut butter."
• (Richard E. Grant) "Nonsense."
• (Priest on Train) "It says so. Who's the man you are to think you know more about it than the press?"
• (Richard E. Grant) "I'm an expert on tits. Tits and peanut butter. I'm also an expert drug pusher. I've been pushing drugs for 20 years. And I can tell you a pusher protects his pitch. We wanna sell them cigarettes and don't like competition, see? So we associate a relatively innocuous drug with one that is extremely dangerous, and the rags go along with it because they adore the dough from the ads."
• (Businessman on Train) "I've had enough of this. I'm getting off at Datchet."
• (Richard E. Grant) "Getting off at Datchet won't help you. Getting off anywhere won't help you. I've had an octopus squatting on my brain for a fortnight, and I suddenly see that I am the only one that can help you. It would be pointless to go into the reasons why, but I've been worried sick about boils for a fortnight. Large boils, small boils, fast eruptors, they're incurable, all of them."
• (Richard E. Grant) "I know that and so does everybody else, until they get one. Then the rules suddenly change. With a boil on the nose, there's sudden overnight surge in fate, they wanna believe something will work."
• (Richard E. Grant) "He knows that, which is why he gets a good look-in with the dying."
• (Richard E. Grant) "Sells them hope, see? But these boys would be full time into real estate if anyone came up with a genuine cure for death."
• (Priest on Train) "Good God, this is a madman."
• (Richard E. Grant) "What do you know about God, you wire-haired mick?"

• (Richard E. Grant) "Don't pretend you haven't noticed my cardboard box, Julia, because I know you have."

Tony Slattery as Basil

• (Tony Slattery) "Get his Valium."

Jacqueline Tong as Penny Wheelstock

• (Jacqueline Tong) "Women, I might inform you, take that primitive device called the pill because it's all they've got. They don't like it, I personally abhor it, but unfortunately it's all we've got."
• (Richard E. Grant) "In what context?"
• (Jacqueline Tong) "In the context of bed."
• (Richard E. Grant) "I'm surprised you need to bother."

Richard Wilson as John Bristol

• (Richard Wilson) "Don't you think the way you reacted could be considered a little irrational?"
• (Richard E. Grant) "Don't start the old irrational bollocks with me, Bristol, I'm up to here with it. I know everything there is to know about rationality, and I know everything there is to know about advertising. So don't tell me I'm being irrational, cos I'm the man who's taken the stench out of everything but s***."
• (Richard Wilson) "OK, old chap, why don't you take some time off?"
• (Richard E. Grant) "What the f*** do you think I'm resigning for? I'm taking forever off. I'm going to cleanse my life. I'm going to rid my mind and body of poisons, and when I've done it, I intend to make it my life's work to encourage others to do it."
• (Richard Wilson) "And how will you do that?"
• (Richard E. Grant) "By telling them, you bald fool."
• (Richard Wilson) "Walking up and down with a sandwich board?"
• (Richard E. Grant) "If necessary."
• (Richard Wilson) "Advertising, dear boy."

• (Richard Wilson) "15 years ago I was out there on the floor where you are now and I was very like you, Bagley, I was the best. But I got myself into some trouble with a gas-fired heating system. I tell you, I was desperate. I made myself ill with worry. I finally ended up with a specialist who told me I'd given myself an ulcer. But it was a lot more than that to me. As far as I was concerned, I'd given myself a detonator. I became obsessed with fears of spontaneous combustion. This gas-fired business had penetrated so deeply into my subconscious, I thought I was seconds away from busting into flames. I started drinking water. Sometimes as much as 25 pints a day. I slept with a bucketful by the bed. I even bought a fire extinguisher."
• (Richard E. Grant) "I'm surprised you needed to bother. You must have pissed like a fire engine."

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