Imperial Car Rental, Hands-Free Phone

Two men are riding along and the driver says, "There's something I've been meaning to tell you for quite a while now. I think about you all the time, every waking moment. I've changed my whole life around since meeting you." His friend, the passenger, looks increasingly uncomfortable.

With great difficulty, the driver says, "I don't know how to tell you this, so I'm just going to say it: I love you. I need you. I have to have you."

The comments are met with silence from the friend, who turns to look out the window as the driver looks over.

Then the screen says that "hands-free phones" will soon be in all of Imperial's rental cars. The joke is that the driver was talking with someone else, unseen on the other end of the hands-free phone, all along -- not professing his love to another man.

Of course, it's possible he could have still been talking to another man on the phone, but it's not likely, and the ad's humor is in its homosexual overtones.

South Africa has of course had a dramatic social and cultural turnaround in recent years. Up until 1976, the country actually banned all TV, fearing it might keep people away from church. Progressiveness has now become a hallmark. Since the lifting of Apartheid, gays are now protected by federal law.