A LITTLE GUINNESS MYSTERY
I like stumbling across a good real-life mystery. It doesn’t have to be a big one, like “How did they build Stonehenge?” or “Where did all the money go?”. A little one can be just as intriguing. In fact, as mysteries go, the subject of this blog is about as inconsequential as it gets. But it’s still a mystery. One about someone’s identity. And the perfect pint. How could I resist…
It all begins, like most good things, in the pub. I was having a drink in O’Neill’s and some of the screens in there were showing old Guinness ads. Back in the 90s, when beer adverts were among the best things on TV, they had a run of really good ones. You might remember the surfer waiting for the perfect wave and its thundering white horses – a neat metaphor for the patience / reward scenario of waiting for your Guinness to settle.
Still, that’s not the ad that grabbed my attention in the pub that day. No, that would be the one about an Italian village and an ageing swimmer named Marco.
Every year, the narrator tells us, there is a “mad race” where the swimmer – a local hero for once going to the Olympics – must round a buoy in the harbour, then race back to the shorefront bar where a perfect pint of Guinness is being poured. The barman’s task means Marco has precisely 119.5 seconds to beat the last drop and send the village into rapturous celebration.
It’s a nice premise, made even better by the reveal that the narrator (who is also the swimmer’s brother and bar owner) likes to subtly tilt the odds in our hero’s favour. Watching through a telescope to give the “Start pouring!” signal when Marco rounds the buoy, he secretly allows his brother a bit more of a head start each year.
VOICEOVER:
“But I’m getting older,” he says. “One day I’ll lose,” he says.
“Don’t worry,” I say… “You’ll never lose.”
Anyway, the whole thing is beautifully shot, and, if I enjoyed it when it first came out, seeing it with my writer’s hat on made me appreciate it even more. In just over a minute of screen-time, the creators come up with a fully formed story, full of heart, characters, backstory, poignancy, a twist, and an intense sense of place. Above all, it feels real.
Well, there wasn’t much sport to watch in O’Neill’s that day, and I hadn’t brought a book with me, so I retreated to a booth, took out my second-hand iPhone, and went down the rabbit hole of that advert.
Interesting…
It turns out the ad has a name, “Swimblack”, came out in 1998, and was filmed in the town of Monopoli on Italy’s Adriatic coast. After a few minutes of roaming around on Google Earth, I was able to find the harbour at the heart of the action, the Porto Antico.
It seems I wasn’t the only one impressed by the commercial, as it won a couple of awards back in the day and is referenced in a few lists of the best ever TV ads. In fact, Wikipedia will give you the names of nearly everyone behind the camera (writer, director, editor, music arranger etc.) while IMDB can add the name of the actor doing the English voiceover (Louis Mellis).
But there’s one detail you won’t find on those pages, or, indeed, anywhere else in that near-infinite mine of information called the Internet:
Who the hell played the swimmer?
I mean, sure, I understand that actors in commercials aren’t necessarily credited in the same way as those in films or TV series, but this (very distinctive) fellow has been one of the best-known faces of Guinness for three decades. Yet the world doesn’t seem to have a name for him, let alone any biographical details.
Well, naturally, I did the only sensible thing: got myself another pint and carried on searching. But website after website offered only the basic info that “local villagers were used for the crowd scenes”. Okay, but surely our protagonist was more than an extra.
Eventually, I found an article on campaignlive.co.uk – written by someone at the ad agency behind the production – with a tantalising extra snippet: “The creative team had a vision of what they were looking for, and they found him on a beach in Italy only days before. He was not an actor but the personification of a stronger, older man.” The article added that he was 70-years-old.
Still no name.
For comparison, I tried looking up the star of The Surfer advert (part of the same collaboration between Guinness and the Abbott Mead Vickers agency).
Once again, the commercial had used a non-actor in the lead role, but there was absolutely no problem finding out about Chadwick “Dino” Ching, a Hawaiian surf instructor.
So why the information black hole for our Italian swimmer? In an era where the creative industries are so hot on giving proper recognition, it just seemed odd, while also leaving me curious… What was this guy’s story? Was he really a former athlete? How did he come to be in such great shape in his 70s? And, most notably: Was he still alive? (He would be closing in on 100 by now).
But as I pondered that last question, doing the maths, factoring in that Italians are famously long-lived etc. I began to wonder… Do I really want to know?
After all, discovering that Chadwick “Dino” Ching was the star of the Surfer advert meant simultaneously discovering that he had died just a few years later. Plus, at the heart of “Swimblack” is the idea of fending off the march of time. A village clinging on to its Olympic hero of yesteryear, a hero clinging on to the physical prowess of his youth, a brother finessing the clock so that neither village nor hero need face the reality of age and decline, every defiant “victory” cheered to the rafters.
All of a sudden, I didn’t want that gloriously fragile scenario to be dented by knowing if the real-life swimmer had lost the ultimate battle with time.
So, as I left the pub, I decided I had come full circle. No longer mildly annoyed that I couldn’t solve the identity of “Marco” but strangely grateful for it.
I hope, in a case of life imitating art, that the unknown actor really did become something of a local hero after that advert. And, naturally, I hope he’s still going strong and powering towards his century. But, if not, I’m fine with not knowing. In a world where every scrap of trivia seems to be at your fingertips, perhaps being seen by hundreds of millions of viewers yet remaining a nameless enigma is a medal-worthy feat in itself.
Besides, in a funny way, without the real-world mortality of an actor to link him to, the character of Marco is free to take on a kind of immortality. Forever in that perfect moment, on the perfect day, in the perfect village, thrilling the crowds on his way to the perfect pint of Guinness. Everyone holding back the clock for just one more year… Then one more year…
“But I’m getting older,” he says. “One day I’ll lose,” he says.
“Don’t worry,” I say… “You’ll never lose.”
Watch the full advert for “Swimblack” here (90-second version)