A toad in the hand gives TV ad fame
053233b in B10 10/8 pics AH Work ex - Sally Pummell, on reception and advertising.
A TRAINEE teacher from Scarborough has been in the national TV spotlight recently as part of a supermarket chain’s latest advertising campaign.
The series of Aldi adverts feature real people telling viewers the benefits of own brand products over market leaders – usually with a tongue-in-cheek revelation. Sally Pummell, a 28-year-old trainee primary school teacher from Old Malton Road in Staxton, features in one of the ads for washing up liquid.
She was with friends in York at the end of last year when she was approached by one of the production team and asked if they were interested in an audition.
“I said I’d do it not thinking anything would happen,” she said. “It might have been a week or two later when I got invited to a screen test. I did a trial of one of the adverts they were thinking of doing. I looked at the other people and thought ‘I haven’t got this’.”
But, she was wrong, and some days later another call invited her to the filming at a farmhouse near Selby. In the finished advert she plays an unstable woman who has supposedly turned her husband into a toad – acting alongside a live amphibian.
Sally said that she coped well working with the creature and five varieties were available for the shoot. She said: “One of them was huge – there was no way it could have fit into my hand. The one I had was lovely. It was a talking toad and made a squeaking noise.”
She added that one or two people had said to her that they were interested in appearing in future adverts once they had seen her performance. She said: “I think they are really good.”
Sally is in her final year of a teacher training course at the the University of Hull Scarborough campus. While she did not make her fortune, the fee has helped with her student loan.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Scarborough
Friday 25 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 24 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 17 C
Wind Speed: 21 mph
Wind direction: East
Your view
Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.