Opera star on what it’s like to play TV’S ‘most irritating man’
WHETHER you love them or loathe them, the famous Gocompare adverts have become a staple of British television for the past decade.
And the man behind them, Welsh opera star Wynne Evans, knows all too well how the character – extravagant opera singer Gio Compario – has divided the nation.
So much so that since the adverts were launched in 2009 Gio has been voted as the most irritating character on television for several years in a row. And while it may seem like a bit of light-hearted fun, the adverts have proved so divisive that Wynne has been the target of incessant trolls and hate campaigns.
For example, an online search for Gocompare yields more than 30 groups targeting Wynne or the adverts. These groups range from one member to thousands.
One group, titled ‘GO COMPARE! GO COMPARRRREEEEEE GO Fxxx OFFFFFF’, has more than 72,000 members.
And while Wynne, who now hosts a daily show on BBC Radio Wales, has learned how to deal with the trolls, it hasn’t always been the case.
“When I saw the reaction I have to say I was a little bit shocked,” the 48-year-old said. “But when it first came out it was high impact. It was on a lot – it was on all the time. I don’t think everybody got the irony of it at the start and so it just became annoying to people, which is fine because the business thrived.
“It went from not establishing itself to being a business that was highly profitable and it did that in a very, very short period.”
After more than a decade the hate Wynne receives daily has calmed down, but he said that at the start it was difficult to hear.
“It was a shock because I was an opera singer and even though I was well established as an opera singer I wasn’t well known. So it was a shock that all of a sudden people are seeing you, people are knowing you, and that people would write things to you like that.
“The first month was maybe quite difficult. But after that – I mean once you’ve been called certain names once, twice, three times, the impact is less.
“And you’re like: ‘Actually, you know what? I don’t care’. I’m just doing a job like a bin man or a bus driver or, you know, a nurse. I’m just going to work every day doing a job, pay my mortgage, trying to feed the family. And that was it. That’s all I thought about.”
Wynne, originally from Carmarthen, had been working as a professional opera singer for 18 years when the adverts first came along. And while he travelled all over the world performing before being chosen to play Gio in the ads, he admits they changed his life.
Gocompare is a price comparison website established in November 2006 and based in Newport. Looking back at his career so far, Wynne said: “After music college I sang all over the world. I was principal at Scottish Opera. I was principal at English National Opera, the Royal Opera House, Welsh National Opera, Opera De Leon – all over the world.
“It was an incredible experience – who doesn’t want to be in a different country every three months and singing opera for a living and working with people all over the world?”
Since launching the campaign in 2009 Wynne has now filmed more than 80 adverts for the company and has a huge role in writing some of the ads as well as devising them.
Despite the backlash he’s experienced Wynne says they are known everywhere and are what people most want to speak to him about.
“There’s the people who think it’s funny to sing it as you walk past, which is great. I always laugh with that. And then there are other people that just come up and want to talk to you about it. I’ve never ever had a bad experience with people coming up to you. So, yeah, that’s been fantastic.”
However that’s not to say things have been easy for Wynne. When his marriage broke down in 2016 he began suffering with anxiety and depression. He said because of his reputation as the jovial ‘Gocompare man’ many people would not expect him to be struggling with his mental health.
While it has improved greatly now, he says it is still something he has to contend with.
“I properly struggled with my mental health. I wasn’t sleeping, I didn’t have any structure to my life. And then I was on the radio every day. So I think that saved my life in many ways. Because I had somewhere to go every day, I had something to do,” he said.
“It’s been one of these things that you get this feeling in your stomach, you feel sick – it’s all about anxiety. Anything can make you anxious when you suffer and people don’t quite understand.
“I’m not ashamed to say I was into some terrible places. In the end I went to see a psychiatrist because I just couldn’t stop this feeling in my stomach. I lived with this anxiety and this depression for about two years before I went to see someone.
“I saw him and he said: ‘You’ve got a chemical imbalance, we need to address that’. And now every day I slowly get better. Every day it can catch you by surprise, mental health can really catch you by surprise.
“We’re all vulnerable and that’s why I find it odd that some people can be nasty on Twitter. And then the next thing you know somebody is saying ‘be kind’.”
Wynne now lives in Cardiff and has two children, 18-year-old Ismay and 16-year-old Taliesin, with whom he spent lockdown.
While many industries have been tipped on their heads by the pandemic, for Wynne his daily radio show seems more important than ever to help keep people’s spirits up.
Meanwhile, after 11 years, despite the trolling that has come with the role, Wynne is more than happy living life as the ‘Gocompare man’.
“It’s totally changed my life,” he says. “If it wasn’t for the adverts I’d still be an opera singer probably working around the world – who knows where I’d be?
“It’s opened loads of doors for me. It gave me the opportunity to have a number one single. I did a few episodes of Stella and obviously I do my own show every day now on Radio Wales so it’s provided me with so many opportunities. So I think the haves really do outweigh the have nots.”