Howard from the Halifax adverts is one of those bizarre celebrities who could have only come to fame in the early 2000s. A staple of the bank’s adverts for nearly a decade, the former cashier became a celebrity almost overnight for his energetic singing and groovy dancing.
But nearly two decades on, Howard’s life took a different turn from the cult following he achieved in his acting days. But first let’s go back to the beginning.
Cast your memories back to the year 2000. A then-34-year-old Howard Brown was working at a branch of Halifax in the West Midlands and had dreams of a promotion to manager.
On a whim, he auditioned for one of the bank’s TV adverts – and was shocked to find out he’d got the part. Whoever it was who decided Howard was the man to be the face of the national banking chain certainly earned their pay that day.
When he went to film the advert, Howard was told to bring just a suit, a tie, and his passport. He didn’t know his whole life was about to change.
Howard first hit our screens on Boxing Day 2000, when the whole nation saw him booging to a parody of Tom Jones’ hit Sexbomb, before being magically transported to a farm, where he sang to a fish – obviously – and continued to have an all-round great time. This was before YouTube or TikTok, but the advert still managed to become a massive viral hit.
Follow-ups also featuring Howard were even more successful, with shouts of “Who gives you extra!” echoing around beer gardens, school playgrounds, and high streets the length of breadth of the UK. Howard even appeared as himself in the 2003 Christmas Special episode of The Office.
In 2008 Howard decided it was time to hang up his dancing shoes, and filmed his last advert for Halifax. He took up a role in the bank’s public relations team, before leaving the company entirely in 2011. But he wasn’t off our screens for long – Howard appeared in a Hotels.com advert in 2017, and even popped up on Channel 4’s First Dates.
And in 2022 Howard hit headlines once again – but this time for a very different reason. He spoke out against his former bosses at Halifax after the bank introduced a policy including pronouns on its employee’s name badges.
The Brummie described the attitude towards customers as “shocking, wrong and disappointing” and told the Daily Mail he wouldn’t want to wear a pronoun badge if he still worked for the bank.
“I think it’s disgraceful,” he said. “It’s a service industry – you should leave politics to the politicians. They’ve got this one wrong.
“If I was a customer, I would be extremely upset. Customers are a precious commodity. You have to look after them. When you work in a service industry, you are there to serve your customers.”
Howard even went so far as to release a song railing against the diversity initiative, named What Happened?
But, with lyrics such as “Why do you hector me with your identity?”, and “Is there a new pronoun every day?” the track was labelled as cringe and left many listeners confused when it was released in 2023.
The bank however defended its policy. At the time a spokesperson told Pink News: “We want to create a safe and accepting environment that opens the conversation around gender identity. We care about our customers’ and colleagues’ individual preferences so, for us, it’s a very simple solution to accidental misgendering.”
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice.