Advertising: Black magic with a perfect pitch

If you're middle-aged, mediocre and pallid, you'll be dead keen on "Young, Gifted and Black". This Bob and Marcia number was a key song of 1970 – a little pop echo from the age of Afros and political ambition, Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton.

And if you're a particular kind of middle-aged person, you'll almost certainly have a reggae habit. Because reggae – especially Bob Marley – was a badge of 1970s somethingness, like a working knowledge of Lebanese Red. The compilers of the 50 CD-package "Young, Gifted and Black" know all that. In their commercial, they show some completely darling footage of old Air Jamaica jets taking their stars hither and yon, Jamaican folk-dancing around in their distinctive way (the way all plate-glass academics tried to dance in those Golden Years), and people riding mopeds on those lovely country roads.

Back then, of course, they used to argue till the cows came home about what was proper reggae as against Jamaican cross-over pop, as against local Harlesden-made black music. The joy of the Trojan label, the authenticity of those I an' I anti-Babylonians – all these were massive debates for thoughtful middle-class 1970s white youth.

But wisely the "Young, Gifted and Black" compilers have avoided purism. They know that, at a distance, it's all merged into a safe, chugga-chugga good-time haze. The stuff people like is the thoroughly jolly rhythmic up-town, top-ranking side of things. So there's Anthea and Donna and Desmond Dekker, Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. I really hope there's none of the Babylonian Full Strength material, but the voiceover seems to be saying it's all good – a double CD of golden hits. "The ultimate good-time reggae collection, all killer, no filler".

It's the aesthetic of that Lilt ad with the Jamaican grannies, or any of those West Indian-y commercials. There are big Afros and flailing dreadlocks, but no unpleasant reminders of modern Jamaica, modern London or modern music.

But let's not mock; the reality is that all this stuff was a million times better than the unimaginably terrible music young, dull, white middle-class people listened to then. Just think of prog' rock – of Yes, King Crimson and Pink Floyd – and thank heaven for lovely cheap old Jamaican pop.

The voiceover, predictably, is Mark Lamarr. Debate has raged for years amongst media intellectuals about Mark Lamarr and what he's for, particularly now he's cut his hair. But I say be fair; he's kept a lot of middle-aged lads off the streets.