Chris Hoy, Kellogg's Bran Flakes

Chris Hoy won BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2008, by winning three Olympic gold medals in a sport that Brits generally don't care about unless it's the Olympics. The award should really be called 'Sportsperson who the public deems to have been most successful in that year by popular vote', but that's probably a bit of a mouthful. I'm not going to be the first to point out that Hoy, like many of his predecessors, doesn't really have much of a personality, but I'm going to feel bad about it because the guy's just got married, and his wife is probably going to read this.

Furthermore, Hoy's sport is a bit boring. Track cycling, that is. There's got to be a reason why track cyclists tend to move to road racing once they've picked up a medal or few, it can't be entirely because there's more money in it. Track races are either over too quickly or they go on so long that it's impossible to tell which lap different riders are on. Contrast: if someone's further up the road, they're ahead. Simple.

Brilliantly, Wikipedia tells us that Hoy was inspired to take up cycling by E.T. (which has a citation, and therefore must be fact). We must be glad that he was not also inspired by Drew Barrymore's descent into pre-teen drug addiction.

Anyway, I guess it's because of Hoy's achievements, rather than personality, that he was chosen as the new face of Kellogg's Bran Flakes.....



Did you see how he nailed that punchline? We can be pretty sure that he improvised that, which would serve him well on Whose Line Is It Anyway, but seeing as that's not on anymore, he'll probably have to settle for Mock The Week.

Hoy plugging Bran Flakes has turned the world upside down for me. I always assumed that Kellogg's Start was the cereal of sports champions, turns out I'm wrong. Actually, it's a shame he isn't endorsing Start, as it's between Corn Pops and Golden Grahams on the list of cereals I haven't had for a long time and would like an excuse to try again.



When I first saw the above advert, it made me wish I was French. Pastries or Bran Flakes is a bit of a no-brainer. While it is honourable for Hoy to endorse a healthier cereal, I was expecting this review to follow a 'boring person, boring food' template. I had Bran Flakes pegged as being like Fruit 'n Fibre without the good bits - they could just call it Fibre. However, having eaten through a packet of Bran Flakes, while I would still prefer a pastry or a bowl of Fruit 'n Fibre, I can't put it better than as Chris 'says' on the back of the box:

"The substantial flakes stay crunchy in the milk and have a lovely malty, wholemeal taste."

Chris Hoy: 5/10
Bran Flakes: 7/10
Total: 12/20