2007 07 28 Guardian Guide on New Order

The Hard Sell

INDESIT MOON You'd need to know New Order's back catalogue with McWhirter-like obsession to realise that the soundtrack to the Indesit Moon washing machine commercial is Hey Now What You Doing from the 2005 album Waiting For The Sirens' Call. New Order and white goods - let's Hoover up the irony. I once asked bassist Peter Hook if drugs were ever a problem with the band, and he replied; "Yeah, sometimes we couldn't get hold of any for days.” With its round window and centred, circular dial, the curiously-named Moon resembles an Apple creation: it's an iPod that'll soak your big, baggy Eddie Yates underpants. It costs £280 at one large supermarket and comes with an A+ for energy saving, A for wash efficiency and B for its spin. That’s all well and good, but is Indesit now targeting the potentially lucrative market of students and football hooligans?

The word on the Mane grapevine reckons the Italian kitchen appliance giant may be perilously short of stock — by now, New Order will have sorted out Indesits for themselves, all their families, Bez, Shaun, Mani, MC Tunes, Johnny Marr, Tony W, Fat Neck, Sir Bobby, A Certain Ratio, The Smashing Pumpkins, Anton Corbijn, Deborah Curtis, the One True Saxon office, Jayne who does their press, and all their mates' mams in the northwest. You watch. Due to freebies, Indesit will end up making a 5p loss on every washing machine they make. Let's recap. Blue Monday has been used on Sunkist and Mars ads, and Hey Now What You Doing for Indesit. What's next? Everything's Gone Green for the Tory party?

LEE GALE