Dom Joly: Never ask permission. The answer's always: 'No'

Credit crunch? What credit crunch? Certainly that's the way it felt in the advertising world last week. I was directing a "viral" ad. It won't appear on television and is supposed to look all "underground" and amateur so it doesn't have the corrupting odour of the big corporate beast about it. Once shot and edited, the viral is "seeded" by specialists. This means that someone paid quite a lot of money sends it to a lot of people by email. The hope is that these people will send it on to others and it will spread like a virus (hence the name) with the corporate message hidden not-so-subtly inside it.

To get an authentic look, they needed someone with experience in shooting shaky, amateur-looking stuff – that's where I came in. The problem with the advertising industry, however, is that they are incapable of doing things simply. What should have been the simplest of shoots – a cameraman and I in a window with my "actor" and a runner on the street, turned into something approximating Apocalypse Now.

I turned up on set to find health and safety people, security, sound, choreographers, everyone from the agency, extras, production co-ordinators. I even had a first assistant director – this is a man whose job is to hear what I say and say it again.

Me: "Right, I think we're ready to go."

Him: "We're ready to go everybody."

Me: "Is everyone ready?"

Him: "Is everyone ready?"

Me: "Action."

Him: "Action."

He was a lovely Geordie fellow but the whole thing was quite unnecessary. I started to realise why ad agencies charge so much money. This industry is totally out of control.

I remember when I was asked to "star" in a Wrigley's ad some years ago. The basic premise was that I would have a huge bar of chewing gum as opposed to my huge phone. I never really understood why. It was a crap idea and I said no. This didn't stop the ad agency. They hired a portly actor with a vague resemblance to me and filmed the ads with him wandering into places with his huge bar of chewing gum. Quite apart from not making any sense, they were rubbish because they were clearly not done for real. Rather than just secretly filming the guy from outside with a single camera, the director couldn't resist using his full box of tricks. So we got weird POV (point of view) shots from the girl serving the fat man with the big bar of chewing gum. How could they get these unless they'd put a camera into the poor girl's head?

Back on my viral we'd had endless meetings to discuss every aspect of this shoot. It involved my man climbing on to a bus stop at one stage. Rather than just doing it in an "underground" spontaneous way, the annoying producer asked permission from London Transport. They obviously said no. If you ask anyone permission to do something they will always say no. That's why you don't ask, you just do. It was this kind of thing that makes the "crazy" viral world not really gel too well with the advertising industry. Eventually, a fake phone booth was imported and placed next to the bus stop and several real phone booths.

Sadly, this is probably the way that the newly paranoid world of broadcasting is going post-Manuelgate. I shot a little comedy sketch to this effect a week or so back for a new comedy website, Funny or Die. It was supposed to be a ludicrously over-the-top view of how hidden camera shows would now have to be filmed – lawyers, ear defenders for "the mark" and detailed explanations of the prank before embarking on it. It was supposed to be fanciful. Now I'm not so sure.

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