Who Let The Chavs Out?

Just occasionally, very occasionally these days you come across an organisation that is prepared to thumb conventions of political correctness and stick its neck out. And when an organisation does this, the consequences seem to make for fabulous media exposure for them as commentators and pundits feel obliged to get themselves into a lather to demonstrate their PC credentials.

But it only works if you've got an engaging and eloquent spokesperson to front up the campaign, which is what appears to have happened with one holiday company.

The organisation that has caught my attention in this department is Activities Abroad (http://bit.ly/ZZ3) which has launched an email marketing campaign to 24,000 users promising "chav free activity holidays." Having had a mooch round their web site it appears that the sort of thing they're offering is likely to be of fairly limited appeal to that segment of society, but hey I'm in danger of letting my pre-conceptions get in the way of things.

That said, at face value this seems like a pretty ballsy claim and one that will get the PC brigade a bit hot around the shellsuit collar.

But it appears, somewhat amusingly, the company has backed up this claim with some pretty significant research.

Interviewed on the BBC this morning someone from the company said they'd researched the most common "chavvy names" and then run them against their database and found they did not have a single Chardonnay or Chantel amongst them, so they argued they were merely stating a fact.

The company reckons they've only had a handful of complaints - sounds like it might be a small price to pay for the level of exposure they've had. I've just done a quick trawl on google news this morning and spotted a fair few mentions of their initiative and most of them are couched in terms of faux outrage. (http://bit.ly/U00S)

Personally I think the handful of complaints they've had represent a fair trade especially since the chap from the company effectively admitted their core target audience are white polite middle class folk with names like Charles and Charlotte rather than Wayne and Shane.

Be interesting to see whether the directors of Activities Abroad are confronted by hoards of shellsuit wearing protesters when they arrive at their office this morning. Burberry hat and a fight in a whitewater raft over a crate of cheap lager anyone?