Let’s be clear on this – this is a profoundly disturbing advert. There’s nothing nice about seeing a load of hyperannuated, vulcanised geriatrics wobbling and warbling around the screen, especially when one of them starts twitching and bucking like’s he’s climaxing.
The two old dears remind me of Harry Enfield’s randy old ladies; Earl wears the perpetual mask of a monkey mid-orgasm, a moment away from revealing a wrinkled old bratwurst from his dirty corduroys, nestling amongst a greying web.
We now get ‘Wonga moments’ – you know? Those moments where you want something but haven’t got any money. In the boring old past you would have had to wait, but now you simply get a payday advance. Mortgaging your salary – what’s wrong with that?
I can think of no cataclysmic global events in the past three years that should give us pause for that when considering blithely pissing cash you don’t have up the wall.
Is this a bad advert? Who knows – I think it’s horrifying, but it’s better than the last one, which earned Wonga.com some rapped knuckles for trivialising short-term loans with ginormous interest rates.
Not that a puppet pensioner wigging out to a some techno gramophone is trivial in the least, of course.