Extinction Rebellion – Benedict Cumberbatch joins eco-warriors frontline despite advertising gas guzzling motor in May
BENEDICT Cumberbatch has been accused by fans of hypocrisy for getting behind Extinction Rebellions protests while starring in adverts for cars.
The Sherlock star, 43, was pictured in Trafalgar Square grinning in front of an Extinction Rebellion hearse and coffin bearing the words: “Our future.”
But he is a “brand ambassador” for MG in India, one of the most polluted countries in the world. One ad shows him in the MG GS, with a 1.5 turbocharged petrol engine, zooming around . . . Trafalgar Square.
He then drives across a clear Westminster Bridge and past the Houses of Parliament — blockaded this week too.
Cumberbatch also fronts a campaign for MG India’s Hector SUV.
More than a million people died in India from air pollution in 2017 — one in eight of all deaths there. Cumberbatch previously starred in Jaguar adverts with the tag line: “It’s good to be bad.”
One Twitter user branded him a “sanctimonious fraud.” Another wrote: “So stupid and shallow.”
No-meat cells
THE Met Police has been ordering pallets of vegan food and dairy-free drinks to give to arrested Extinction Rebellion protesters.
It comes after activists complained of a lack of meat-free options during previous demos.
More than 1,000 have been arrested in the current campaign.
Insp Brian Smith posted a video of himself carrying boxes of vegetable chilli to Brixton station’s cells.
He said: “We’ve got plenty.”
On Friday activists blocked off the BBC’s central London HQ and scaled the front — and daubed their logo on a war memorial near the Cenotaph.
The two-week climate protest, with 1,100 arrests so far, has also been backed by model Daisy Lowe, comedian Ruby Wax and actors Juliet Stevenson and Mark Rylance.
On Friday night PR guru Mark Borkowski said he was surprised, saying: “It just attracts negativity.”
The Sun Says
IF the Oscars invent a category for Sanctimonious Hypocrite of the Year, and they really should, competition will be intense. But there is one outstanding performance.
The award for 2019 goes to Benedict Cumberbatch, who fronts lucrative car ads in a land choking to death on smog, then backs eco extremists protesting against the country with the fastest emissions reductions in the G20: Britain.
So many celebs spend their cosseted lives in a luvvie bubble, surrounded by sycophants never daring to challenge them. So perhaps the staggering absurdity of joining Extinction Rebellion’s London blockade after promoting MGs in India, where air pollution kills a million people a year, never occurs to him.
Or maybe the multi-millionaire actor intends simply to excuse himself with the same insouciance as his globe-trotting mate Thom Yorke from Radiohead — the Extinction Rebellion funder who blithely admits his own hypocrisy.
These stars insist it is for Governments to act (even though ours is doing just as the IPCC’s scientists recommend). Meanwhile, they’ll carry on consuming as only the very rich can — and flying around the world first-class.
Why should ordinary mortals give their climate hysteria a moment’s credence when they’re not serious enough about it to practise what they preach?
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