For reasons that don’t really matter, and that I can no longer recall, a recent internet trawl landed me on the Ardrossan & Saltcoats Herald website.
If you have no great interest in the Three Towns – Ardrossan, Saltcoats and Stevenston (which doesn’t even get a name check in the paper’s title) – or the wider environs of North Ayrshire then there’s probably not a lot to grab your attention. It’s mostly standard local paper fare: bank branches closing; rows with the council; delays to the opening of the leisure centre; X Factor contestant Wagner singing a song for a local plumbing and heating business.
About that last thing. Yes, this actually happened. 2010 X Factor finalist Wagner Fiuza-Carrilho was hired by Ecoglow’s Craig Donohoe to belt out a ditty and promote his business. Wagner, a man who was beamed into the homes of millions of Brits week after week, on camera in the public domain (in portrait mode, presumably because he hasn’t quite got the hang of his phone yet), wearing a company T-shirt and singing the following words:
“Ecoglow, Ecoglow
If you need a new boiler, our prices are low
Ecoglow, Ecoglow, Ecoglow”
The price of this piece of marketing genius? A hundred quid.
It is genius, there’s no doubt about that. Sure, the lyrics could’ve been written by a small child or Noel Gallagher. And yes, the song is diabolical. Trust me, I’ve listened to it over and over (and over and over) again. I can’t stop listening to it. It’s terrible and hypnotic all at once. So terrible and so hypnotic. By the way, whatever tune you’ve attributed to those words, forget it. It’s like nothing else on earth.
And that’s precisely the point. It’s irritating, it’s catchy, it’ll creep up on you just when you think you’ve banished it from your mind forever. It’s had over 58,000 views on Facebook. And I’m prepared to bet that if you ask people in south-west Scotland to name a local heating and plumbing business, they’ll do it through the medium of song. Or something approximating song, anyway.
Now how much would it set us back to get the Village People to sing PHPI to the tune of YMCA?
To watch Wagner in action, and you know you want to, keep scrolling…
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A little further…
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Here you go…
https://www.facebook.com/wagnercarrilho/videos/1504082169620217/
