There was a time when people of colour were not adequately represented in British TV commercials. For many years, despite the UK’s growing black and Asian population, there were too few people matching that description in the commercial breaks.

Advertisers’ commitment to diversity has quite often been a commitment to discrimination

In the programmes surrounding those breaks, it was the same. Even in the late 1990s, when so many British corner shops were owned by Asians, the one in Coronation Street was owned by Alf Roberts in his white grocer’s coat.

British advertisers, quite rightly, decided to correct this imbalance. Trouble was, they all did it – or overdid it – at exactly the same time.

The result, of course, was a TV Ad World which bore no demographic relation to reality. The large and improbable number of black people who suddenly appeared in commercials is one of many reasons why the advertising industry is no longer taken seriously.

The practice then became entrenched when corporations put ‘diversity’ at the........

© The Spectator