…every time I see one of those stupid Tanqueray commercials. Is anyone else as sick of those commercials as I am? It can’t just be me. Who the hell is this guy anyway? I’m not sure if that’s his real name or he’s just an actor I’ve never heard of hired by a booze company I’d never heard of. My wife keeps insisting that it’s D.L. Hughley and I keep having to tell her it’s not and that just makes the commercials that much more annoying to have come on fifteen hundred times during a show. The “bio” for Mr. Sinclair at the Tanqueray website reads as follows:
Tony Sinclair. Socialite extraordinaire, world traveler and the TANQUERAY Gin company’s best find ever. Armed with a witty line and a cocktail shaker, Tony is the master of the mix for TANQUERAY Gin.
Wow. It makes him sound like a complete putz. Does this crap actually sell liquor? Are there really people out there who see this guy shilling booze who think to themselves, “I’m going to buy me some Tanqueray gin just so I can be like socialite extraordinaire Tony Sinclair!” Hell, is he even known by anyone for anything other than those stupid TV commercials?
All I know is I want to slap the shit out of him every time he laughs that ridiculously overwrought laugh of his. I’m assuming I must not be the target audience for that commercial cause it really doesn’t make me want to buy that particular brand of gin.
Great blog, Les, and glad I could contribute to your enjoyment. I kinda liked that “verbal acuity” comment myself. Sure wished to get some mileage out of the “Life of Reilly” take-off as well, but that may have been too far a reach.
Tanqueray isn’t the cheap stuff…more on the order of a high medium level…a top-shelf brand. It is large production and still good, but really can’t compare to the small-batch stuff.
As far as leaving psychoanalysis to the professionals…what did I say to indicate I wasn’t professional? If you’ll review, my comments were written primarily about those ‘responding’ to your original missive, some of which certainly went over the top. And my considered opinion about those responses hasn’t changed.
And I wouldn’t consider it “judgment”…more like “commenting” on someone’s apparent ‘blog-published’ issues…I am certainly not one to judge, just to observe and comment and it isn’t always pretty, but can get pretty funny. As far as psychoanalysis goes, sometimes reviewing comments on a message board is as good as you can get…usually more revealing than a face-to-face conversation. The anonymity of the web seems to allow the words to flow with more candor and those same words can convey both their literal message along with the emotion and mental state of the writer. And the broadcast of those words, stated without responsibility, can provide a very compelling venue to those who have no other audience.
Now it’s time for a Tanqueray martini…it’s a balmy 78 degrees with clear blue skies here in Florida, and a nice, backyard lounge chair is calling my name.
I appreciated your comments.
“What I find really amazing is the bile and invective directed toward an actor playing a part”
Oh, great. Another socially inept academic who fancies themselves to be V from V for Vendetta and thinks that they have decended from the heavens in their chariot to shed their intellectual grace upon us mortals.
Juuust ducky.
Well folks, get ready for pages upon pages of lengthy dissertations filled with tons of pop psychology buzz phrazes like cognitive dissonance and groupthink, etc. coupled with an inability to communicate in written form without waxing prosaic.
Well, I guess everyone needs something to do on a Friday night…
What’s your point?
bennyb… I think he is expecting pages filled with cognitive dissonance and groupthink shed with prosaically waxed intellectual grace…and he wants it all by Friday night. Better get busy!
ha!ha!
I’ll do that … as soon as I finish downloading the internet.
“…and that internet downloading goes really well with Tanqueray gin. Ready to Tanqueray? AH,ha,ha,ha!”
Great site and great comments! Cheers!
…and now we have the latest Tony Sinclaire episode…new Tanqueray Rangpur. A gin infused with an indian lime… good stuff, although Tony seems to have lost a little elan. He seems to be trying too hard, or maybe the subcontinent doesn’t agree with him…
Tony Sinclair is cool. You clowns who don’t like him are just jealous. He has something good going for him, and I hope we see more of him. J.
A gin that goes with anything?
Maybe they are trying to reinvent the character – lets see how the next commercial turns out.
Fav: You wouldn’t put a donkey in the Kentucky Derby?
tony sinclair is a fictional character the company made up as a joke for an ad campaign for their gin. his real name is rodney mason and hes from philadelphia. so ya, hes a fucking actor in a series of funny commercials… get the fuck over it.
Reading this reminds me of a quote by Groucho Marx “I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book”. Most tv shows are tripe and the ads are even worse.
so one of those commercials came on a minute ago and we were just having the exact conversation as your blog here. wtf is up with that guy? i want to break that fucking tanqueray bottle over his head. we googled him and it sent us to you. thanks for being awesome. and right.
One old-fashioned glass, filled with ice to the rim; add Tanqueray Rangpur to the halfway point in the glass; add tonic water to the rim; result is a lime-less gin and tonic with an excessively clean refreshing taste. No I’m not sellin’, just tellin’. All with the added benefit of preventing malaria (quinine in the tonic water). Enjoy!
I think the scrub brush beard DOES compensate for the peach fuzz on your scalp
Honestly I think the dud’e a faggot,my god listen to him talk and watch his actions.What now a fuckin ice cube that doesn’t melt???.I don’t know who he is or who he is trying to persuade everyone that he’s some billionaire faggot,screw Tanguray man! Just give me my Tequila,or Mesquale and my lemon. salt and some hot babe I can drink out of her voluptous navel.Now that’s a luscious drink,even if I am from the SOUTH!! it’s not always Jim Beam
You guys are just pissed because Tony Sinclair found the forbidden grove of Rangpur limes and all you found was your ugly wives caking on their mascara in the bahtroom of your studio apartments.
I am ready to Tanqueray, RANGPUR STYLE!
LONG LIVE TONY SINCLAIR!
Where does one go about getting masquale? It is for my religion? But I”m have a difficult time finding it and getting it. Can anyone please help?
Steph
Steve/Steph, what the hell makes you think this would be a good place to ask that question?
I bet he means mezcal, which is just any agave-based alcohol beverage made in Mexico that isn’t tequila. Easy way to tell the difference, look on the label. It says if it’s made in the state of Tequila or Oaxaca. Also, if it has the worm, it’s mezcal since it’s illegal to put the worm in tequila.
This educational bit brought to you by a really bored guy who works in a liquor store.
I like Tony Sinclair. Can’t wait for the next one.
he da bomb. Can’t wait till the next one!
“you wouldn’t put a donkey in the Kentucky derby.” You wouldn’t put a gap toothed idiot on a commercial would you? I loved the comment about eating corn through the chain link fence… made me laugh like hell because I could picture it. These commercials suck and Tanqueray is no where near as good as bombay. I’ll stick to my bourbon though. I don’t know whats worse the fact that he is on a commercial or the fact that socialite wannabes buy Tanqueray because it makes them think they are “happening” people with no apparent source of income like TS, you know just party all the time in lavished atmosphere without ever being seen working a day in their life. I could do without the racist shit though… stupidity knows no color.
@whiskey_rules
you sound like a bourbon kinda guy. Why call yourself whiskey? even better yet, are you also a gin expert?
Ready to Tanqueray? AH,ha,ha,ha!
Well at least the fool finally figured out how to pronounce Tanqueray. He went through several generations of commercials pronouncing the q like it was a g: “Ready to TanGERay?” Maybe the gap-toothed fool is dyslexic.
@bennyb
I do not claim to be an expert but I am a connoisseur of sorts. My fav Irish whiskey would have to be bush mills black, my favorite borbon is a close match between wild turkey and makers mark. My fav scotch would be talisker. Not too big on the Canadian whisky. As far as gin goes my fav would be Citadelle or Bombay. My point being that I make my own assesments on what I like, I don’t let flavor of the day commercials or other peoples taste cloud my judgment as to what I like I judge that based on flavor. I don’t understand what you were implying about why my name is whiskey…. you are aware that bourbon is a whiskey right? I don’t drink only bourbon but it is my staple.
IF you had googled him, you would have known that he is a fictional character made for the commercial. That’s how I found you guys fighting about it. OK, have fun with that!
HL, I wrote this entry over two years ago. The info to be found on Google was a wee bit scarcer back then. It would make you look a little less foolish if you actually checked the dates on the entries you’re commenting on.
Tony Sinclair’s life history is, as he says himself, “somewhat more unusual than the average.” He spent his early childhood in the African bush in Tanzania, around the coastal city of Dar es Salaam. He showed an early interest in his surroundings, playing with the local African kids and learning the Swahili language. He collected dung beetles to keep as pets, and his young African friends showed him where he could find chameleons, the lizard-like reptiles that can change colour to match their surroundings.
When he was ten years old, his parents sent him off to boarding school in England. He soon realized that although he liked England, he preferred Africa, and wanted to go back and work with animals. He decided to work towards a degree in zoology, and entered Oxford University in 1963.
Within three days at Oxford, he had convinced Professor Arthur Cain, an evolutionist with an interest in Africa, to include him on an expedition to the Serengeti. The trip was to take place in a year or two. In the meantime, Sinclair organized an expedition of his own, and in the summer of 1964 he and three others went to Turkey to study bird migration routes.
At the end of his second year in Oxford, he was finally able to get back to Africa where he spent four months in the Serengeti studying bird migration. He returned to England, and after graduating and getting married, he moved back to the Serengeti on a NATO Scholarship, and was handed the task of discovering why the African buffalo population was rapidly increasing. He stayed there for seven of the next eight years, returning to Oxford only to write his PhD thesis.
Living and working in the Serengeti became difficult for researchers in the early 1970s when the politics in East Africa suddenly changed. Researchers were no longer welcome or safe. Concerned for the security of his wife and young children, Sinclair accepted an offer to move to the city of Darwin on the north coast of Australia. His job there was to work on the conservation of native Australian wildlife, whose population was under pressure from introduced predators such as the red fox and feral cat.
Sinclair was in Darwin for less than a year before it was destroyed in a cyclone, and his job along with it. At about the same time though, he was offered a job as an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, which he accepted. He moved to Canada in 1975, where he has lived ever since.
He was soon able to resume his work in Africa, and since the late 1970s he has spent a few months every year in the Serengeti organizing and conducting research. He is interested in the large scale view of entire ecosystems; how they function, what keeps them from falling apart, and what causes them to fall apart.
He has played an integral role in Serengeti research over the past forty years. In early December of 1991, with funding from various agencies including Canada’s Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), he organized and conducted a workshop in Seronera, the research station located in the center of the park. The participants in the workshop, all scientists interested in different aspects of the Serengeti ecosystem, built a computerized model of the reserve. Using software developed at UBC, they included not only parameters such as rainfall levels and numbers of predators, but also the effects of human activity on the system, such as poaching, tourism, and health care levels of the local people. The resulting model was a first attempt to make predictions of the future of the Serengeti ecosystem, based on a large-scale, science-based overview of the entire park.
The process brought together a group of researchers who had for the most part been working independently of each other, and had never before collaborated with each other. They were able to start seeing their work in a new way, and to see how the whole system fit together. The model allowed them to see where more detailed work needed to be done and for many of them, it opened up new avenues of research.
Dr. Sinclair has produced three books on the Serengeti, has just finished a forth (Fall, 2006) and plans to have a fifth. Each one is a collection of papers written by various scientists, and each covers a different time period in the life of the reserve and his time there.
His work is not limited to the Serengeti. He has also worked with Charles Krebs in the Yukon doing a 20 year study of the population dynamics of the snowshoe hare, and has conducted a large amount of work in Australia and New Zealand designing conservation experiments.
Nearing the age of retirement, Sinclair has bought some land on the shore of Lake Victoria near the western boundary of the Serengeti National Park, and will be building a house there. He will be sharing it with Simon Mduma, who is the head of all Tanzanian research in the Serengeti. When he retires, Sinclair plans to live there much of the year and act as a technical advisor, with free access to the Serengeti to conduct his research, and to just be in the land he loves.
FFS – I wish someone would put a cap in Tony Sinclair’s ugly fucking mug. Socialite? Well, if he walked into one of my parties, he wouldn’t have to worry about that ugly gap in his teeth anymore – he wouldn’t have any teeth left. What a piece of shit.
A good reason NOT to drink Tanqueray, other than the fact it tastes like shit anyhow. Now, give me a good bourbon – and get these idiots off my TV set.
I can’t stand the somebitch either. I’m drinking Bombay now in protest.
Y’know who I’d like to slap the shit out of? That megachurch douche bag, Joel Osteen. He just has that kind of face.
While he may be a complete phony, he is unfortunately not fictional.
Hey I Love this Guys act he really makes a great spokes person for Tanger He,s got the look the whole nine for a snobbish socialite look likes he,s really enjoying himself at what he,s doing You go Boy with yo bad self. Plus this man is making money making a lot of people sick Ha Ha so just sit back and enjoy Mr TONY SINCLAIRE EXTRODINAIRE……
This simpleton looks like a goddamn fucking Stymie reject!
Honestly.. I’m a Las Vegas bartender.. I challenge anyone to rival me in spirit and wine knowledge… Tony Sinclair honestly is one of the most original and brilliant spokespersons for any alcohol brand on the planet… Heres the rub.. Gin… an alcohol in America that is mostly drunken by Blacks needs a black spokesperson… But the classic gin sale goes to the upper class white consumer… Tony alienates neither young black people nor upper class white people because A) He’s british B) he’s well spoken and C) he’s witty and clever. If you can’t sit back and laugh at Tony’s adds then you really shouldn’t be drinking gin…
I’ll give you A, but I disagree on points B and C. Good thing I don’t drink gin.
is this a racist redneck talking. before u critizie go get a new look. you know one of the 21 century.
It has nothing to do with his race and everything to do with how obnoxious the character is.
I’m not sure how having a different appearance would make my opinion any more valid. That’s a pretty stupid comment to make.
SEB…quite a thread you’ve got going here! Kind of surprised (still, several months later) at the vitriol spewed at poor Tony…but I do enjoy the gin and Tony continues to make money. I wonder if some of the reaction illustrated on this thread is Tanqueray-bottle green envy… regardless, I would advise all who harbor such strong negative emotion to have a Tanqueray martini, wet, up and dirty…hard to think bad thoughts when you are enjoying one of the finest libations created. Ready to Tanqueray? Ahh Ha Ha!
Wow! I continually impress myself with my ability to put a thread to sleep. Is it my inarguable logic or my though provoking posits which result in absolutely no rebuttal? Maybe too many Tanqueray Martinis can enable even Tony Sinclair to become everyone’s friend…glad to hear everyone has made nice. Now how about a cocktail? Anyone?
My vote was the sheer inanity of it made any response not worth the effort it would take to type. You need to lay off the gin, it’s starting to affect your perception of reality.
What the hell did you just say?
Gin makes you see clearer … and remember … “always in moderation”.
sb – what point were you expecting us to rebut?
I think the commercial is classy and it’s different. It’s refreshing to see that for once they can put a black man on a commercial selling alcohol while dressed in a nice subtle suit, not surrounded by nearly naked women. That commercial makes me want to try Tanqueray and I don’t even like gin. It also makes me want to crawl into the TV and join them because they always show a party I’d love to go to! I’d hang with Tony any day.
After watching Lord of the Rings, my husband and I had a fight whether TS was played by Orlando Bloom or Orlando Jones… Epic fail all around I guess.
So it is my assumption that Tony Sinclaire has finished his ad cycle, and unfortunately will no longer be promoting Tanqueray. In retrospect, Les, do you not find it a shame that such a polarizing influence will no longer be sourced through google and brought to your fine blog? For awhile there it was near the top in hits on Dear Tony…after all, that is how I found it.
As I will probably no longer drop by and extol the virtues of Tanqueray and the positive aspects of the ad campaign in which Tony starred, I have one final question and dependent on your answer, a request. Have you ever had either a Tanqueray wet and dirty martini, or the Tanqueray Rangpur with tonic water? If not, would you please try one, the other, or prefereably both? This isn’t so much a sales pitch, but rather a suggestion for enlarging one’s perspective. You previously stated you were not a gin drinker, and that is fine, but if given the opportunity one should avail themselves of both the grandfather of classic cocktails in the former, and an outstanding thirst-quencher in the latter, if for nothing other than to say, with authority, you have.
I hope you find yourself in a position to indulge in these magnificent imbibations, and my best to you and yours.
If you’re not going to drop by again then I’m not sure what point of answering your questions would be, but what the hell, it’s my birthday and I’m feeling charitable.
sb wrote:
Not in the least. I’m glad they dropped that ad campaign as it did nothing to make me want to try the product. In terms of attracting traffic to my blog my little rant here about Tony doesn’t even crack the top ten list. The big traffic pullers are entries dealing with either politics or religion with one of them being in the number one spot for at least three years running now.
sb wrote:
I have not tried either drink as of yet. I’m not opposed to the idea of trying them, but as I drink rather infrequently I’ll probably forget about them before the next occasion comes around and I’ll end up going with my usual preferences. If someone were to offer me one at a party I’d give it a shot, but I doubt I’d think to try one on my own.
Happy belated birthday Les…and I guess I wasn’t clear…my intended meaning was that I would not drop by to “comment on Tanqueray” as our polarizing Mr. Sinclaire is no longer in vogue. And in honor of your birthday, email me the name of a proper cocktail bar in your area which is familiar with the proper contruction of the above libations and I will happily arrange to finance your sampling of those two drinks.
I haven’t had a proper martini in several days and it is getting thirsty over here, so I am of the mind to have one myself.
Let me know the name and telephone number of your watering hole and I’ll take care of it. And once more, happy birthday.