Getting a celebrity couple to front your advert can’t be an especially easy task if you’re a package holiday company more closely associated with Majorca than the Maldives.
So hats off to Thomas Cook, which appears to have paid Jamie and Louise Redknapp lots of cash to sacrifice their remaining credibility by appearing in an unconvincing advert suggesting that just like the ordinary poor person, they spend lots of time preparing for, and fantasising about, their accursed once-a-year fortnight in Fuertaventura or Bodrum or Crete or wherever it is ordinary poor people take package holidays to.
The Redknapps are unconvincing in the sense that they are far too tanned, rich and good looking to be going on a Thomas Cook package holiday. On the plus side, they are both thick and speak in whiny Croydon-ish accents. In this sense, they are just like the sort of people you befriend over sun-parched bacon and eggs at Frank’s Beachside Taverna before regretting it for the remaining thirteen nights.
There’s a diabolical scene with Jamie doing keepie-uppies, barefoot except for a Burton’s suit, on a beach. And a bit where Louise nuzzles up to a horse. But the dialogue is the shittest part.
Jamie and Louise dribble on about how they dream abaaaad “it”, how they can’t wait for “it” and how they fawwwl in lav on “it”. But it’s not until the end of the advert that you find out what “it” actually is.
Obviously it’s a dreary package holiday. But I invite you to watch while imagining that “it” is:
(a) A night with a 20-stone German prostitute
(b) Heroin