Joe Lycett raised eyebrows as he staged a stunt outside Shell’s London HQ to campaign against the company’s ‘greenwashing’.
The comedian, who is on a mission to stick it to various businesses in his efforts to ‘have our back’, performed a routine outside the company’s offices before he was drenched in ‘oil’.
Joe, 33, arrived in a yellow bus painted with a mural of a mock Shell advert featuring the caption ‘We’re turning our carbon emissions green for Earth day’ before he then performed a routine alongside dancers.
That culminated in Joe being doused in grey paint to represent oil, with a parody television advert starring the comedian then shown outside the firm’s HQ.
The stunt was filmed as part of a Rumpus Media documentary called Joe Lycett vs The Oil Giant, which looks at the energy company, its marketing and its exploration for new oil reserves.
The documentary will be aired by Channel 4 ahead of the Cop26 climate change summit in Glasgow later this month.
Joe told the PA news agency: ‘I’ve been making a documentary about the concept of greenwashing and Shell is one of the companies that seem to do a lot of greenwashing.
‘I’d like to chip away at climate change and get them to change their policy. But realistically, they seem to bury their heads in the sand around this thing.’
Joe added that while Shell was doing ‘brilliant things’ by investing in renewables, the ‘fraction’ of renewables to fossil fuels the company was handling was unacceptable and his aim was for Shell to ‘stop taking oil out of the ground’.
Seeing as the comedian previously changed his name to Hugo Boss in his protest against the fashion house last year, taking on Shell seems like the next logical step.
His latest little stunt follows a number of others the comedian has undertaken recently, largely for his consumer rights show Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back, including walking off Steph’s Packed Lunch in faux protest in July to raise awareness of single-use plastics.
Joe said his decision to get more involved in campaigning against climate change came after he met a group of Extinction Rebellion protesters who were cleared of causing criminal damage to Shell’s London headquarters in April.
‘Their story is amazing,’ he said. ‘I felt like that sort of approach is being done by Extinction Rebellion, and actually, something more light, fluffy and silly could be done by me. That’s what I do, I’m a comedian.’
He added that while he was unable to attend Cop26, Darren Cullen, an artist who created the bus, would be at the event with the vehicle.
Shell responded to Joe’s stunt, with a spokesperson saying: ‘As Joe points out, we are already investing billions of dollars in lower-carbon energy. We need to grow these new businesses rapidly if we are to alter the mix of energy we sell.
‘That means letting our customers know – whether through advertising or social media – what lower-carbon solutions we offer now or are developing, so they can switch when the time is right for them.
‘But the world still needs oil and gas for years to come – and investment in them will ensure we can supply the energy people can rely on, while lower-carbon alternatives are scaled up.’
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