How to Get Ahead in Advertising

How to Get Ahead in Advertising is a 1989 British black comedy fantasy film written and directed by Bruce Robinson, and starring Richard E. Grant and Rachel Ward. The title is a pun and can be literally taken as "How to Get a Head in Advertising". In the film, an advertising executive has a nervous breakdown and finds himself concerned with the ethics of his profession. In contrast with his moral concerns, a secondary personality manifests itself, being cynical and unscrupulous. A brief struggle between the two personalities leads to the emergence of a third one, but this one is both ruthless and cruel. Plot The film is a farce about a mentally unstable advertising executive, Denis Dimbleby Bagley (played by Grant), who suffers a nervous breakdown while making an advert for pimple cream. Rachel Ward plays his long-suffering but sympathetic wife, Julia Bagley. Richard Wilson plays John Bristol, Bagley's boss. Bagley has a crisis of conscience about the ethics of advertising, which leads to mania. He then develops a boil on his right shoulder that comes to life with a face and voice. The voice of the boil, although uncredited, is that of Bruce Robinson. The boil takes a cynical and unscrupulous view of the advertising profession in contrast to Bagley's new-found ethical concerns. Eventually, Bagley decides to have the boil removed in hospital, but moments before he is taken into the operating room, the boil quickly grows into a replica of Bagley's head (only with a moustache) and covers Bagley's original head, asking doctors to lance it, which is done since nobody has noticed the switch from left to right nor the new moustache.