Captions used on this publicity photo of Jeremy Corbett, ranked and reviewed
Being Jeremy Corbett (Image: Archi Banal)
How many ways can one publicity photo be used? Alex Casey counts the ways.
Caption That has been a beloved segment on current affairs panel shows 7 Days for years, inviting comedians to riff on alternate captions for interesting photographs from around the world that week. Whether it’s riffing on a child on a swing in a wartorn neighbourhood (“John Key not happy with early artist impression of SkyCity convention centre”) or a snap of a explosives expert engulfed in flames (“SkyCity renovations going well”), the segment is so popular that audiences have been invited to submit their own to win loot on the 7 Days Facebook page.
But, in a twisted example of life imitating art, caption writers at Stuff appear to have been playing their own version of Caption That with images of 7 Days host Jeremy Corbett for years. Armed with a swathe of publicity image options to adorn any entertainment article in which he features, the anonymous caption authors are given free rein to choose whichever image they want, and write their captions as mysteriously, dramatically or colourfully as they so desire.
But these publicity pictures of Corbett are simply too novel, too prop-based, too easy to caption. You can make a million puns about lambs, about flowers, about the royals. Where’s the challenge? As I found during my extensive research, true caption art is created when the publicity photo exists as a blank canvas onto which the caption author can project… literally anything. Take this heavily used example. Just a man, wearing a blazer, smiling with his arms buoyantly crossed.
Let us begin with a pretty standard offering from the publicity photo/caption genre:
4) Jeremy Corbett is a former breakfast radio personality who appears on The Project and 7 Days
3) Jeremy Corbett is a fan of science podcasts
2) Jeremy Corbett… eeking out jigsaw puzzle
The Spinoff’s word boffins have confirmed that this caption, nestled within an article about how celebrities are passing time in lockdown, actually contains a spelling error – it should be eking, not eeking. But should it? Maybe he is scared of jigsaw puzzles! Think about it. Eeking out jigsaw puzzle. Eeking out. Jigsaw puzzle. Jigsaw. Saw. Do you want to play a game (puzzle)? Eek!
1) Jeremy Corbett recalls horror of 9/11
Now THAT… is eeking out.
Alex Casey
Alex Casey is a senior writer at The Spinoff with over a decade of experience writing about popular culture and social issues in Aotearoa. She lives in Ōtautahi and likes watching reality TV and walking the dog, occasionally at the same time.
