In the UK, Nigel Farage is under fire for having made Cameo videos that featured him making controversial statements.
The Guardian’s unearthing of Farage’s videos has raised questions about his relationship with the far right and who he is willing to take money from. Farage charged £155 for one video he made in 2025 for a man he was told had received a 16-month sentence for his involvement in a far-right riot. Despite knowing that the man had been convicted over his role in the disorder, the Reform leader recorded a supportive message for him, telling the man “I’m with you”.
…Farage was paid £141 for another video in which he promoted an event by a Canadian neo-Nazi group, which used the clip in propaganda alongside fascist salutes and antisemitic imagery. Farage called the event “the best thing that ever happened”. The video was removed from Cameo’s website after the Guardian’s story.
As a result of the revelations, his account says that he no longer is accepting any offers.
Cameo is a site that enables you to pay for celebrities to make personalized videos where they say things that you want them to say, if they are willing to do so. The usual requests are as gifts to friends to wish them on their birthdays or anniversaries or similar things. But clearly some are pushing other agendas.
I can understand why minor celebrities might sign up to do them, since it provides some easy money as a side hustle. If there are suckers out there willing to pay for people to utter some words, there will be those who are willing to oblige. What I can’t understand is the appeal for the buyer of the message and the intended recipient. Would the person you are seeking to impress really be flattered by getting a personalized message from some has-been B or C lister who was paid to give it and has absolutely no idea who you are and does not give a damn about you?
I can sort of understand if you knew the celebrity personally and they recorded the video as a favor to you. Then the recipient may be impressed that you knew them well-enough that they would do this for you. So this would be of benefit to you,
But otherwise it seems really tacky to me.
I guess I just don’t understand the thrill that some people feel when a sort-of celebrity mentions their name, even if they had to be paid to do so.
Would it be cheaper to get an AI-generated celebrity look-alike to do the endorsement?
I have no idea, just asking.
i did it once and it was real fun. there’s this internet comedian who started on vine and migrated to youtube, is a professional voice actor. i paid him to say something encouraging to my husband, in the voice of one of his characters. not nearly as expensive as the time i bought him an original acrylic painting that had been the cover of a cheap 80s horror novel, which makes sense, because after the initial thrill not as much return as seeing professional art on yer wall.
re: the “doesn’t know you / care about you,” if they’re good at their job, they can make it feel earnest. i sometimes refer to actors as “professional charisma havers.” he did the job. shit, i’ll link the guy.
I guess it might be amusing implausible deniability.
Paying an actor for a micro-gig: fair enough, you get a performance.
But these are not performances, and Farridge is not an actor. His job is to espouse opinions for money. Most of the time this is for far more well-heeled clients than the occasional Cameo gig.
Here, Farridge gets the last laugh. (OK, last laugh but one -- that one goes to the real client.).
I can imagine paying the actors performing “Gandalf” or “Captain Picard” to make birthday greetings (most of my friends are nerds).
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Nigel Farage may be in the “pretend” profession, but not in a good way. I suppose if a friend had a birthday on the same day as Benito Mussolini and if that friend had *really* dark humor…
Each and every time I post here even though I do not know you and you do not know me we will unlikely meet and I am not nearly as accomplished as you… it pleases me in a small but perhaps ridiculous way to think that you might read it.
Humans are human?
“does not give a damn about you”
I really don’t think this is true. Actors on the whole are extremely friendly people, and many of them are empathetic to a fault. Yes, there are a few narcissistic assholes just like in any Venn circle of people, but I would argue that the very nature of both the art and the business of acting tends to drive out people like that. To be a good actor requires being laser focused on the emotions of other people, and the financial realities of professional acting almost guarantees they have relied on the kindness of strangers many times in their career.
As for actors not giving a damn about their fans, I can provide many examples of actors going the extra mile for fans: Nichelle Nichols, of the original Star Trek was an unpaid ambassador for NASA championing women and people of color to get STEM education and then join NASA. Amanda Tapping of Stargate SG-1 was given a handmade quilt by a fan. She kept it, and when an episode of the show was going to include the apartment her character lived in she made a point to bring that quilt to the set and display it. Dominic Keating and Connor Trinneer were in a Star Trek show several years ago. They now go to a number of Star Trek conventions and yes, they do get paid for that, but in the evenings they find some place to sing karaoke and invite their fans to join them. They don’t get extra money for doing that, they just like to socialize. Nathan Fillion is a very successful actor who has been the star of two long-running TV shows. I am sure he could retire to a tropical island any time he wants to. He also was on Firefly, a TV show that was cancelled in 2002 after only 14 episodes. But it still has a big fan base, and Nathan loved both the show and his cast mates so much that he just announced a continuation of Firefly in animated form with the original cast. It is very unlikely to pay him for all the time he has already put into it, he did it for love of his fellow actors and the fans.
Not sure he does. Depending on how many of his prospective voters hear about it and change their minds, or what ammunition it gives his rivals for the racist vote. What’s truly astonishing is the greed of the man: he’s already a multi-millionaire, yet he takes this political risk for paltry amounts of money.
Many of the things he was paid to say undermine his carfully cultivated “I’m not a racist or antisemite” stance, and one was “Up the Ra” -- which is a pro-IRA (Irish Republican Army) slogan.