Matthew Pover Limited Well, I’ll be bum-swizzled! A mum’s fake tan nightmare lead to her being dubbed Worzel Gummidge by her mates.
Tales of tanning woes are relatively common. There’s so many shades, so many options, so many moving parts in establishing the proper look. Just remember Ross’s iconic disaster in Friends, ending up with the aesthetic of a burnt crisp.
In a bid to cheer herself up and feel fresh and sun-kissed, Janice Evans opted for a £2.99 bottle of St Moriz Darker Than Dark lotion. However, with the combination of a much darker skin tone than planned and her hair, she ended up being compared to the living scarecrow.
ITVWithin minutes of applying the fake tan, her skin turned a decidedly darker shade than anticipated. Janice took measures to dry and lighten the tint, going for three long showers and lathering herself in baby oil. Yet, three days later, the colour was still as strong.
The 38-year-old soon shared pictures of the newfound look on Facebook, writing: ‘All my mates have been taking the mick. They said I looked like Worzel Gummidge, especially with the hair.’
For those unaware, Worzel Gummidge (who’s been played by John Pertwee and Mackenzie Crook) is a fictional walking and talking scarecrow with head made from an orange mangelwurzel vegetable.
Matthew Pover LimitedJanice, from Nelson, Lancashire, told The Sun:
I went for a bottle one shade darker than I usually buy, thinking it would give me a really nice tan but after just a couple of minutes it was really dark. I thought that was it, but it just got darker.
Due to her apparent Worzel-esque appearance, her four kids have been banned her from the school gates. After this recent tanning hiccup, Janice plans to revert back to a lighter lotion.
Matthew Pover LimitedSpray tans and fake tans rose immensely in popularity with the turn of the millennium, with the likes of Jersey Shore boosting the success of Mystic Tan. The global tanning market is valued at over $1 billion, with supermarkets stocked to the brim with lotions (as well as the popularity of sunbeds, despite their links to skin cancer).
Here’s an interesting factoid about fake tan: did you know that in 2008, sales of tanning lotions and sprays dropped about 20% from the previous year. Hilariously, people attributed this to the pale-faced vampires that hit the big-screen in Twilight.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.