The Campbell Academy Blog | Colin Campbell (65)

Smashie and Nicey

We've seen this stuff before.

Smashey and Nicey were parody/satire characters developed by Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield in the 1990s.

Their photograph adorns this blog, and they took advantage of making fun of Radio 1 DJs who were caricatures of themselves.

There were many suggestions about who those people might have been, but in all likelihood, they were a wrap-up of many different personalities at the forefront of entertainment at that time.

One of their most famous phrases was, "he does a lot of work for charity, doesn't like to talk about it," as they talked about each other.

The problem with satire is that it doesn't work.

The people laughing at the other guys laugh at them, and the people who are being laughed at think they're being laughed with.

Recently at the Clinic, I was shown some historical social media content by one of the guys I work with.

It's from a little while back, but I'd heard rumours of this, and it's a video taken of two guys driving around Leeds in a fancy car who are both well dressed with someone who appears to be in the back seats filming.

The two guys are dentists and are well known from a social media point of view, and they're driving around Leeds and stopping off on street corners, giving money to people.

In this particular snippet, they stop at a street corner where three young lads are selling snacks.

The few lads are probably 12 or 13 years old, not so dissimilar to my own son's age.

The guys in the car have a conversation with the lads, asking them what they're selling and ultimately giving them three brand-new £20 notes in return for nothing back because the lads get to keep their stock.

At the end of the clip, the guy giving the money "Are you happy?".

The boys say "Yes", and they drive away.

Perhaps I'm the only person who draws a parallel with another guy from Leeds who used to drive around in a very fancy car, talking to children on street corners which was equally as sinister.

I could tell you that as a father of a teenage boy, if Callum came to me and told me that someone had pulled up in a fancy car, had a chat with him and given him cash for nothing, I would be concerned enough to phone the police probably.

This is sinister beyond sinister, and it's hard to see what the purpose of this actually is.

In the same sitting of being shown some things on social media (I do this every so often to try not to lose touch with reality entirely), I was shown a reel on Instagram, where a guy has two young women stood either side of him (he has a dentist and introduces himself) and using some filter, he transforms them into Barbie lookalikes and then invites patients to come and see him to be made into a Barbie lookalike.

Not only is this ridiculous and sinister as well, but it just shows the absolute lack of any intelligence related to people who might try to advertise in this way (or maybe they're cleverer than me).

I have seen Barbie, and it is fantastic, but it exists at many different levels, and the message of that movie is not for women to try to be more like Barbie.

The message is entirely the opposite of that, so to use that as a marketing tool is seemingly ridiculous.

Getting the message wrong for movies which are trying to make us more equal, not less equal, and creating content which is a little bit like Jimmy Saville can make you want to jump up and down and shout and write things, calling people out and demand for change from your regulator or all sorts of shit like that.

But in the end, remember Chris Barrow's adage, "Don't wrestle with pigs in shit because the shit stinks, and the pigs love it".

All we can do here is use these things to realise what we don't want to be.

It's a common enough trap to think that if we're not like that, we'll never get any business, but the truth is, many more people over here never want to be like that.