I put it to you that no one can fail to be impressed with the genius that was Orson Welles. The daring of the infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast, the cinematic splendour of Citizen Kane, and of course the near perfection of Carol Reed‘s The Third Man.

The new movie Me and Orson Welles is doing good business in the box office, and the BBC are celebrating the great man’s work by showing over this festive season some of his finest moments. But I suspect that one appearance will be missing from Auntie’s collection of celluloid gems by the great man. So I’d like to put that right.

Those of us of a certain age first came aware of Welles in the 1970s, whoring himself on TV ads for various brands of booze. But here’s one commercial that, for some reason, didn’t make it to air. He was clearly under a lot of stress at the time, or perhaps had been sampling the wares during rehearsals. Either way I think he hid it quite well.

Citizen Caned.