Phony Mandela interpreter lands himself starring role in ad

The interpreter who made a name for himself by being terrible at his job has landed a role in an advert for an app which allows users to broadcast live video to friends and followers.

The bizarre ad  makes light of Thamsanqa Jantjie’s offensive and strange sign interpreting of Mandela’s funeral, and features him talking about how he’s cashed in on the performance, and how he’s sorry for “what he did.”

The  interpreter talks up the merits of Israeli app LiveLens, with Sefi Shaked, a representative from the start up, telling NBC, “We needed something surprising. We wanted to choose a presenter who is the worst presenter for a live app possible.” A more questionable statement from Shaked is “Now he can have the closure and earn some money from it. It’s morally right.”

The rather tenuous link appears to be that “the most interesting things happen live” as Jantjie states in the video. ” Choice of spokesman is always an interesting issue for any brand, and despite the frankly odd – and some would say inappropriate – use of Jantjie, we would almost certainly not have heard of the app without him…

Metro, Huffington Post and others have picked up on the story so far.

View the bizarre ad here:

 

 

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