London’s South Bank swapped the smell of whispering angel-enhanced urine for literal sh*t as the ten-metre bronze “Fountain of Filth” projectile vomits murky brown water into the establishment’s face, thanks to Channel 4
As glorious as it is foul, one figure stands taller than the rest as the visage of a suited, fat-cat executive moneybags type has pockets bursting with cash. Below him, the Trevi-esque depictions of the great British public retch as a visceral middle finger to a water industry that has spent over three decades treating the British public like a toilet.
In what feels like a move in which Channel 4 has finally lost its temper on behalf of the nation, the launch is to promote Dirty Business. One of those now-incredibly-in-vogue docudramas akin to Toxic Town and Mr Bates vs The Post Office, in which David Thewlis and Jason Watkins portray two retirees in the Cotswolds. One is an ex-copper, and the other a maths professor, who notice their local river looks like a vat of liquid sh*t and do some sleuthing to uncover that we are all being robbed.
Tracking back to 1999 and the death of an eight-year-old from E. coli O157 after playing on a sepsis-ridden Blue Flag Dawlish Warren beach, the whole thing is one of those all too often needed history lessons on what happens when Maggie “The Milk Snatcher” sold us a dream of shiny pipes. We now have £80 billion of debt, and the water companies are just ATMs for private equity vultures doing a reverse King Midas and turning gold into sh*t.
Which is why 4Creative’s stunt is rather brilliant. Brilliant in placing a metaphorical poo in the pool. The fountain, the hero, and supported ad vans being sent to the water company offices, and sticking a Guardian sewage calculator showing how much effluent is dumped in the time it takes to read 600 words.
All hail The “Fountain of Filth” which is brilliant in insight, concept and execution from the way it looks to the way it’s named and making you laugh, raise eyebrows, retch and feel angry all in the space of a few milliseconds.
By removing the jargon, hedging and political discourse on a subject Fergal Sharkey has been agitating about for years and forces the commuter to forget nuance and collectively think “You took the money. You didn’t fix the pipes. Time for you to stand in the sh*t”
