Actually, the books do describe her as creepy and corpse-like; specifically, she's dead-white after eating the fruit in Magician's Nephew, and she's often described in terms of despair as well as power. (I re-read the whole series yesterday...). I think this may be another case of Legolas's Hair, I can't find anything in the books to say what colour her hair is, although Pauline Baynes interprets it as dark in her illustrations. Personally, I've always visualised it as blonde. In fact, the internet rumours that Nicole Kidman had been cast, made me very happy, I think she would have been perfect as well, in a slightly different way.

Totally with you on the Panarotti's ad, it makes me cringe. We have some damned good, creative, intelligent advertising in SA, it's nauseating that some agencies are still producing such dreck.