Trevor Beattie: My advertising hero – a knitted monkey

My cat died last week. Curiosity killed it. Seems it doesn't matter how many times you warn a shaggy, short-sighted, ailing 10-year-old mog not to go poking its whiskers into next door's oily water barrel, a cat's gonna do what a cat's gotta do. Even if that results in it quietly croaking on your carpet two hours later.

I only mention my cat's sad passing in passing, because the relationship we shared bore an uncanny resemblance to that of Al (aka Johnny Vegas) and Monkey (née sardonic knitted glove puppet) in the current ITV Digital advertising campaign.

True, my cat only very rarely spoke down to me in a posh BBC accent, and was far more likely to deliver a live starling to the living room than an easy-to-set-up-set-top box, but avid ON Digital subscribers we were. And in all our time together (as couch and small potato respectively) I was never left in any doubt as to who was in charge. Cats are like that, and so too, it would appear, are monkey glove puppets.

This for me is the advertising campaign of the year so far. Not least because of the issue it raises: from the cult of celebrity, through the digital revolution itself to the hilarious Darwinian reversal of man being admonished by hastily bunged-together woollen simian puppet. Eat yer heart out, Tim Burton.

Let's start with the grubby twilight world of celebrity or, more specifically, celebrity endorsement. Who's the star of these ITV adverts? It's certainly not poor Johnny. Ain't no one caring 'bout the fat fella. Year after year of fringe adulation, only to end up as straight man to something your nan knitted. Strange also, that it's Johnny's character which has the comedy puppet voice. Monkey sounds like the man from the ministry. There's only one organ-grinder in this campaign and it happens to be the monkey.

So does this make him the cheapest celebrity in advertising? Not even close. Compare if you will, our wily, witty, knit-one pearl-one simian superstar with the dozen or so Z-list "celebrities" currently prostituting themselves in the name of Heineken. There are those who will tell you that this is post-modernism. Irony. Self-effacing fun. That it is somehow "big" of these people to send themselves up. I say piffle. When I actually mean, bollocks.

There's something fundamentally cruelly British about nurturing an ever-expanding band of tragi-celebs for the sole purpose of ritually humiliating and then shooting them in public. It's reminiscent of breeding grouse only to blow their little feathered brains out on the Inglorious Twelfth.

These pica-celebs are not doing it because they're big. Quite the bloody opposite. They're doing it because they'll do anything for money. They have no shame.

Gamekeepers are fond of telling people on Newsnight that if we (they) stopped raising dumb animals specifically for the kill, the poor little mites would rapidly become extinct. Where celebrity is concerned, it's a thought worth pursuing.

Give me Monkey & Al any day of the week. And it looks like they're about to. Not content with blitzing Britain's billboards with T-shirt-swapping Monkeys (notice how Al doesn't feature in the printwork), ITV has now switched, appropriately, to guerrilla tactics. Even if it hadn't worked, I'd have appreciated the wordplay. But it did. This week a gigantic canvas appeared in Leicester Square, directly opposite the cinema premièring Planet of the Apes. On its surface, the stark, 30ft-high image of Monkey in Ape's clothing. How the fur flew. Monkey upsets Fox shock. How dare the movie moguls complain. He's a monkey, for God's sake. He's doing what comes naturally: being cheeky. And anyway, it wasn't a re-make of Planet of the Apes clothing he was wearing. It was sartorial re-imagining. Ask Tim.

In Monkey, ITV has stumbled upon a priceless marketing property. One that will work harder, longer and for less dosh than any number of two-bit celebrities. We all love the Monkey. And I know one person in particular who's willing to take him to her bed. Brace yourselves for the rush to grab the must-have toy of Christmas 2001. But be aware that you're behind me in the queue.

Unlike the dubious heroes of Heineken, Monkey has a genuine, if knitted honesty. A nobility, goddammit. And the antics of Daniels among the lions have merely confirmed what I've suspected for a very long time: there are many things which may be preserved in alcohol. But dignity isn't one of them.

Trevor Beattie is chairman and creative director of TBWA\London