Loco Toledo

An announcement on Southern Railway’s website says:

“Hola Amigo,

“Southern are giving 10% off Advance and Off-Peak tickets and they no charge you any fees, so you save mucho money. If you book ticket and no can go you get your money back with Southern's Rainy Day Guarantee. The weather good too, so why not go places by train. So many trains, so many places... I love the train. Go Loco. Go Southern.”

It’s an update by Southern’s mascot, Loco Toledo, a caricature Mexican.

A brief biography appears on his Facebook page:

“Hey amigo, my name is Loco Toledo - wrestler from a small village in Mexico. I take my wrestling name from the Spanish word for locomotive because trains are my number one passion.  In my village we have railway station, but the train it hardly ever comes. One year I wait so long for train, my moustache it grows all the way down to the ground.”

He regularly updates his Facebook profile in similarly bad English, referring to things Mexicans are supposed to like; tequila, chili, piñata, and fiestas.

Loco appears in a series of adverts, speaking in a strong Mexican accent. The character is played by Charlie Baker. As this video shows, Baker speaks English perfectly well, with no obvious accent:

Loco’s online postings are almost certainly done by a fluent speaker writing badly on purpose. If the writer actually is a Mexican struggling with English, it’s cruel of Southern not to bother getting someone to proofread them.

More outrageous than the casual xenophobia, though, is the fact someone is getting paid to do it. It seems mocking Mexicans can be quite profitable. Richard Hammond makes £25,000 per episode of Top Gear. This is the mean annual income for a full-time worker. May is on a modest £20,000 per show, while Clarkson is believed to make £1m a year from it. To earn their pay, they say things like this: