September 2024 yielded the kind of unexpected pleasure that I suspect could only truly be understood by myself - the unexpected pleasure of discovering a whole new BT "Get Through To Someone" ad I hadn't previously known existed. For a while, six installments was all I'd been able to root out of the campaign, and I'd resigned myself to the likelihood that they might indeed be all that there was to see of it. It seemed like a decent enough number for a (relatively) short-lived promotion, enabling it to touch life at a number of bases - different forms of relationship angst, parents whose children were flying the nest, having to navigate some embarrassing domestic inconvenience. Issues that could be readily remedied by lifting the receiver and dialling, and all to the genial tones of a sunny harmonica. A scenario I'd not seen represented was that of the adult friends whose lives seem to be pulling them in different directions and who yearned to maintain their connection - but unbeknownst to me, GTTS had that covered too. The tale of scouts-cum-chefs Frank and Lewis had eluded me since 1992, but I finally got to see it, thanks to an upload on Neil Miles' channel.[1]
Frank, hard at work in a hectic restaurant kitchen, is asked about his mate Lewis, who's gone to work in a venue called Giovanni's (it's never explicitly stated, but we might assume that he is a former employee of the featured kitchen). Frank admits that he hasn't spoken to Lewis recently, having been "up to [his] eyeballs" in work, but quickly finds himself on a wistful trip down memory lane to the time when he and Lewis were rambunctious Cub scouts, savouring the outdoors and playfully tormenting a peer by the name of Chubby Johnston. "Eyeballs" is in many ways an inversion on the typical GTTS formula, in which fantasy sequences were used to emphasise the chasm between knowing and not knowing. Picking up the telephone and making contact with another being was the logical course of action, whatever the circumstances, bringing reason and clarity to a universe inclined to pursue its own irrational conjecture. The fantasies were often delirious and unsettling, signifying the pitfalls of uncertainty and miscommunication. Even in "The Bellows of Indifference", which forewent the usual tortured visions and had the protagonist talk himself up with a dubious internal monologue, the all-important phone call indicated a final coming down to Earth (or return to Kansas, given that he had a Cairn terrier). This is not so with "Eyeballs", where the fantasies (objective flashbacks, even) represent a gentle escapism, a yearning for a youthful idyll that feels as though it might be well behind our heroes. The closing call works not to dispel these visions, but to validate and preserve them.
A recurring fascination of the GTTS campaign are the busy mise en scenes - the particular character that pervaded the protagonists' immediate environments and addled imaginations while echoing something of their emotional crossroads. Here, there is an obvious contrast between the present and the past, with the bustling kitchen signifying the adult responsibilities Frank has convinced himself must take priority over his connection with Lewis. The flashbacks, meanwhile, take place out in the open against a backdrop of natural serenity, with hooting owls, chirping crickets and a gentle evening haze becoming shorthands for boyish optimism and honesty. The young Frank and Lewis are seen howling, alluding to the fact that they're scouts of the Wolf Cub variety. It is also, significantly, a primal form of communication, both expressing their allegiance to their pack and serving as a private in-joke between two friends. The demands of adulthood are consuming and easy to get lost in, while childhood is wild and liberating. The flashbacks convey a connection with a bygone time that still feels so alive and immediate within the present but is in danger of being consigned to mere nostalgia. Frank and Lewis have not yet drifted apart to a fatal or alarming degree - Frank specifies that it has been weeks since he last spoke to his old friend, not months or years - but they are at a crucial point in their lives where things are moving on, and they risk losing touch with one another, and with the childhood memories they built together, should they get too subsumed in their diverging adult duties. Lewis has been altered by his new path, but only superficially - when he receives the call at Giovanni's, he does so in a fake Italian accent, but switches to his authentic self when he recognises Frank's voice coming down the line. As it turns out, he and Frank have changed little since their Cub days. They are still as in sync as ever, with Frank using the exact same terminology as Frank did earlier about being up to his eyeballs. And of course they're still creatures of the youthful wilderness, howling in unison, even while wearing their professional chef attire and in the formal enclosed environs of their respective kitchens. The adult and child worlds are not such a contradiction, the former having capacity to accommodate the latter with a little effort and the right technology. The light above the phone at Giovanni's glows warmly, championing telephone communication as an illuminating force, one that has the power to extend across both physical and temporal barriers and keep lifelong friends together.
The twist in the narrative reveals that, rather than pulling them apart, Lewis's latest career move has only reaffirmed their tie to their childhood utopia, taking them right back to where they left off. We learn that an adult Chubby Johnston also works at Giovanni's, as a maître d'. Now impeccably dressed, he seems far removed from the days when they used to humiliate him by swathing him in bandages, but he is still not in on the joke, shuffling past humorlessly in the background while they indulge in their euphoric bonding ritual. It is interesting that they chose the bustling kitchen as the final connecting visual and not the scouting idyll, but as we've established the two are effectively one and the same. This is the culture in which they've upheld their mutual belonging; thanks to British Telecom, they remain connected as part of a wider community of dynamic chefs, not simply two disjoined souls adrift in separate eateries.
After the thrill of discovering "Eyeballs", and with it that the GTTS campaign was bigger than I had realised, I dared not hope for an eighth installment. Life had already generous enough in throwing me this one unexpected bonus; anything further would have felt like too much to ask. And lo and behold, that is exactly what I got - not longer after "Eyeballs" surfaced from oblivion, an eighth installment from early 1993 also showed up. In fact, as of now the tally sits at eight and a half - I'm not sure that we can fully count the Sunday Special ad with no real narrative, just a bunch of people jabbering in a four-way conversation, and a weird connecting image that (so far as I could see) wasn't discernible in the mise en scene.
[1] It also transpired to have been on Adam Beckwith's channel all along, though I must have missed that.
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