“Fiery Poet-Priest” Accidentally Used to Hawk Potato Crisps
A recent marketing promotion has drawn the attention of keen-eyed literary buffs after a University of Anglia lecturer tweeted that the stock photo of a stern-looking man used to sell Tyrrells Potato Crisps is actually a portrait of R.S. Thomas, a famous Welsh poet who died in 2000 and was known as “the fiery poet-priest.” Jeremy Noel-Tod, who teaches literature and creative writing, told The Church Times that he imagined Thomas would have been “deeply contemptuous of the whole business, though he is also reported to have a wickedly dry sense of humor in person, so he might privately have relished the way in which this facetious piece of marketing has backfired.”
“When we see an eccentric old photograph—like the one on the front of this
bag—we can’t help but dream up a silly caption,” states the packet of sweet chilli
and red-pepper crisps adorned with Thomas’s visage that offers winners
“a fleeting look of contempt, or £25,000 in cash—whichever they’d prefer.”
Tyrells has since issued a statement clarifying that it purchased the photo
from a stock library and did not know of its connection to Thomas at the time.
“My reaction was a mixture of real amusement at the absurdity of it and real
anger that a respected poet should suffer such an undignified posthumous
fate for the sake of selling overpriced fried potatoes,” said Noel-Tod. “It does
seem to me to raise a real ethical question about the casual appropriation of
images of the supposedly anonymous dead for jocular commercial purposes.”
See The Church Times, January 10, 2014; The Guardian, January 28, 2014.
Issue 512
