It's nutty, I know, but this week I felt a little down in the dumps about the departure of Ira Goldstein from our television screens.
The hapless New Yorker sent to New Zealand in 2000 to find out what made the ASB different wasn't real, of course, but I will miss him all the same.
I gather there were about 60 advertisements involving Goldstein and the grumpy and greedy Sir who was his boss.
Who knows why they worked?
Part of it may have been their predictability.
Goldstein would make an idiot of himself with one of his bumbling investigations followed by a farcical attempt to explain it to his boss.
That he and Sir were never on the same page of the prospectus was part of the deal.
Sir's arrival at one stage in the series so he could see for himself what was going on did not add to the enlightenment.
It was silly and unbelievable, but somehow managed to be charming.
Perhaps Goldstein appealed to the inner bumbler in all of us and to anyone harbouring thoughts of getting the better of an overbearing and unreasonable boss.
It did not make me rush off to bank with the ASB, but apparently it did have that effect on some people, if those entering comments on a blog about Goldstein's departure are to be believed.
It would be interesting to know how many such customers realised the bank had been wholly owned by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia since 2000 (adding to a 1989 75% shareholding).
An international brand strategist (a title surely worthy of a Goldstein investigation), Brian Richards, commenting on the end of the campaign in The New Zealand Herald, said brands were about "ongoing conversations" and he thought the public tended to tire of things.
(Some of us might just want to buy and use goods and services we know will work without any need for talk, but hey, I'm old-fashioned and probably tiresome with it.)
In the final advertisement, it was disappointing nobody suggested Goldstein should run for public office, now his work for ASB has come to an end.
Instead, we have Goldstein living happily ever after with a pregnant wife, apparently in an Auckland mansion, thriving off the profits of his bagel business.
A jobless Sir arrives on his doorstep, allowing Goldstein to have the last laugh by ordering him back to New York to find out what makes their bagels different.
Ira bribing voters with bagels and dropping clangers on the campaign trail would have been a welcome diversion to the reality of this year's local body elections.
If there has been anything particularly gripping about this event in the south, sadly, it has passed me by.
Usually, I can crank up enough interest to hold an informal meeting at home with a few loved ones to go through the candidates' information.
Generally, these events involved scrutinising hairstyles, ridiculous promises and the overuse of phrases such as vision, passion and other waffle.
Those unlikely to pass muster included anyone not organised enough to have their blurb included, or pretentious enough to refer to themselves in the third person, although opinions might be divided about the chutzpah of a candidate prepared to offer only a photo.
During this process, we were guilty of sharing any gossip, salacious or otherwise, gleaned about any candidates and making outrageous and possibly defamatory comments about those brave and hardy souls who tried to convince us of their passion, vision or happy marriages.
Over the years, the occasions have been fuelled by tea and coffee and food and possibly the odd glass of wine or port.
This year, given all the concern about alcohol abuse, I convinced myself a good voter is an unimpaired voter and it would not be setting a good example to mark the ballot paper under the influence of anything stronger than water.
Unfortunately, without alcohol or caffeine and with the body clock confusion the introduction of daylight saving produces in me every year, I was not confident I could stay awake long enough to get through all 55 pages of the candidate information booklet.
Call me self-centred and lacking civic spirit, if you will, but I figured the sight of me slumped snoring and dribbling over the dining table could have a more harmful effect on guests' voting ability than anything I had subjected them to on previous occasions.
Despite my apathy, by the weekend there will be some local body politicians whose demise will be certain.
Some of them are probably persistent good-natured bumblers with ongoing conversations voters have tired of.
Their departures are unlikely to feature the careful scripting or razzmatazz of Goldstein's and, sadly, they may not evoke as much emotion and affection, either.
Sometimes fiction is fairer than fact.
Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
