‘People still blame me for having a perforated eardrum’: How we made Tango ads | culture

Trevor Robinsontechnical director

My creative partner Al Young and I were on an 18-month subsidy when we landed our dream jobs at the Howell Henry ad agency. We had to prove ourselves quickly. Tango’s synopsis was basically to talk about. “We want Coca-Cola to be afraid of this small British brand,” they told us. The campaign was based on what real fruit looks like. We decided to escalate this concept, and make the strike a physical matter.

Most ads were cause and effect – consume the product and something interesting will happen. We flipped that around, so something comically unpleasant happened. It was almost anti-advertising. I loved Charlie Chaplin kicking people’s asses and then running away. The boot at the rear was considered too aggressive but we thought we’d get away with slapping Morecambe and Wise. We filmed the tests with a video camera, but the slap wasn’t big enough. We ended up putting our arms straight out to the sides, pausing, and then “WHAT!”

At first, he was just a fat man. Al said: Let’s make it orange, it’ll look more like the drink. This orange genie has become shirtless. We auditioned a lot of actors. Peter Jeeves, who got the job, was a proper stage actor. He had this funny way of running where his stomach would go forward and his head would be back, pinning him down. When the agency pulled the ad, we asked him to rerun it with a kiss instead of a slap, and Peter told us: “I can’t get parts anymore. Everyone sees me as this fat orange guy.” Gil Scott-Heron did the closing voiceover. I was horrified – when I had one of my heroes say, “You know when I got Tango’d” at the end of our ridiculous commercial. But Gale was laughing, saying: “You Englishmen are crazy!”

After the shoot, we were jumping around like excited little kids. Whenever we show people the ad, we get the reaction: “What the hell?” We knew he would either be loved or hated, and if the latter, we’d probably go back to the dole. One industry figure called it “oik advertising.” We were working class kids trying to make noise.

I knew it was a winner when I fell asleep on the tube one night and woke up to hear these guys imitating the ad. I wanted to scream: “I did it!” I was in the cinema when the film was shown, and the audience burst into laughter. It was the best feeling. Then we started hearing about fake slaps, which we never expected to happen, and doctors complaining about patients having perforated eardrums because they were Tango. We were devastated but our bosses were great. They said, “It’s there now. Everyone’s talking about it.” To some extent, our mission was accomplished, enabling us to do all the sequences.

It boosted Tango sales by 35%. They changed the branding to a black box on the back of the commercials. It’s amazing how much it has spread, taking on a life of its own. You used to see fans dressed as the Tango Man at football matches, and painted orange with their shirts, which was very annoying. People still come up and tell me they got a perforated eardrum because of me. The slogan resonates to this day. I’ve seen headlines about Donald Trump’s tan saying, “It was a tango.”

Hugh Dennis, voice actor

I was doing voices for Spitting Image when my agent called about a new Tango ad. They needed two sports-style experts to describe this surreal, miss-it moment. Former footballer Ray Wilkins – a lovely man, who is sadly no longer with us – was quiet and laconic, so they wanted someone exciting by contrast. I came up with this extreme Geordie commentator. Cross between Sid Waddell of Darts and Eddie Waring of Rugby League. I think they actually tried Sid Waddell himself but he wasn’t Sid Waddell enough.

I absolutely loved doing it, it was groundbreaking advertising. The slap caused problems on the school playgrounds. “Oh my God, I’m partly to blame for all these ear infections,” I thought. But there’s always some serious madness on the field. It was a crackling sound in my day.

The campaign ran for four years in the 1990s, then was repeated in the 1990s. Every six months, I’d go into the studio, talk about football with Ray, and he’d make this funny sound: “Wee-ay, Tony, I think we’ve got another one here!” It was great fun but kind of exhausting. There were a limited number of takes I could do because it stretched my voice. I couldn’t do anything else for two hours after that because I was screaming so hoarse.

Knowing that the ads were popular made it even more fun. People were waiting for the next event, which rarely happened. Oddly enough, I also saw this from the other side. After university, I worked for Unilever and became the brand manager for Lynx deodorant. So I can look at it from a marketing perspective and say, “I wish I had thought of this.”

Because the campaign ran for a long time, it brought in regular money. I didn’t buy a private island but I did well. It was a lot of his time. An orange guy in a giant diaper walks up to someone on the street and slaps them in the face? You won’t get away with it now – but it’s nice to be part of this cult classic. Most people don’t realize it was me. I’m currently in The Importance of Being Earnest in the West End with a very young cast. When I mentioned that I did the voice-over for Tango, they said, “Wait, what? That’s you? A middle-aged man playing the priest in Earnest?” But they all remember it perfectly.