British rowers smash Pacific record to raise £50,000 for brain tumour foundation
The five-man Ocean5 crew completed the 2,800-nautical mile journey from Monterey, California, to Hanalei in Kauai, Hawaii, in just 32 days, six hours and 51 minutes, shattering the previous record of 54 days.
Their expedition also saw 66-year-old businessman and team member Kevin Gaskell become the oldest person to row across the Pacific, according to the organisers of the World's Toughest Row.
He was joined by his son Matt, 33, adventurer Tom Higham, 37, martial arts champion and Amazon explorer Patrick Deacon, 40, and performance therapist Stephen Greenan, 40.
The team, who trained in Lymington, Hampshire, survived on freeze-dried meals, protein snacks and 10 litres of water each per day, while enduring severe exhaustion, sleep deprivation, salt sores, sea sickness and towering waves.
Their carbon-fibre boat, Lady Jane II, powered by solar panels, carried enough food for 55 days and was equipped with three rowing positions and two small cabins.
Before setting off, Mr Gaskell – a former managing director of Porsche, BMW and Lamborghini – described the challenge as the toughest they had faced.
He said: 'This will test our resilience to the limit – the boat will not stop and we'll each be rowing for two hours on, two hours off.'
The mission has raised more than £50,000 for The Lewis Moody Foundation, which supports people living with brain tumours.
The foundation was set up by the former England rugby captain in 2015 following a family friend's diagnosis.
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Business Insider
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Business Insider
2 days ago
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How a budget airline's irritatingly catchy jingle became the sound of summer on social media
A whitewater raft flips, a camel charges a tourist, a car dangles off a ledge in Italy — and then comes that impossibly perky voice: "Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday." Unless you're incredibly offline, you'll have heard those words dozens, if not hundreds, of times in the past few weeks. What started as a TV jingle for a British budget airline has become the accidental soundtrack of summer 2025. The jingle itself is a remix of the airline's long-running tagline — "Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday" — layered over the chorus of British popstar Jess Glynne's 2015 hit "Hold My Hand." To date, it's been featured on over 2 million videos on TikTok — many showing travel nightmares, vacation fails, or otherwise ironic nods to the very idea of a relaxing vacation. The brand behind the jingle Jet2, largely unknown outside the UK, is a low-cost, three-star airline that flies from Britain to sunny spots in Europe. Known for its affordable travel package deals that bundle flights and hotels to destinations like Spain, Greece, and Portugal, Jet2 has built a loyal following among families and bargain seekers. Think £420 for flights and a week in a three-star hotel in Turkey, or £360 for a three-night city break in Rome. Its cheerful, no-frills marketing — once squarely aimed at mainstream holidaymakers — has now been hijacked on social media. As with many budget airlines, the airline's low prices come with some tradeoffs. One now-iconic video on TikTok shows a passenger squeezed into a Jet2 seat with no backrest at all — just a flimsy yellow-and-black plastic tape strung across the frame where the seat back should be. The video has racked up more than 32 million views. On Skytrax, it gets one star for its in-flight entertainment options; it rates higher — four stars each — for value for money and staff service. A viral earworm "I first heard the jingle while scrolling through TikTok — it's hard to ignore," Zane Fall, a TikTok content creator based in Brisbane, Australia, told Business Insider. Fall is among the many people who have used the airline's cheerful jingle as a backdrop to an utter vacation fail. In a video Fall shared on TikTok in June, Fall can be seen launching off a zipline platform in a tropical rainforest. Halfway through the ride, his harness gives way and flips him upside down, sending him gliding helplessly through the trees with his legs flailing in the air — all while the Jet2 jingle plays in the background. While he said the video was taken in August 2024 in the South Pacific region, Fall said, "This was the first sound that stuck out to pair it with." "I think what makes it go viral is the hilarious contrast," he said. "You've got this super upbeat holiday jingle that screams 'perfect getaway,' and then people pair it with clips of travel disasters, airport chaos, or just totally un-glamorous moments." "I still love it," he added, "though I'll admit it's been stuck in my head for weeks." Verity Walker, a London-based actor, used the jingle to express her frustration with the sweltering heat of the London subway during the summer, which, unlike many of its global counterparts, isn't air-conditioned. Her TikTok video shows an Underground train pulling into a station, with the on-screen caption: "Just watching my sauna arrive." Over the clip, she overlayed a remix of the Jet2 jingle — a screamed parody of the original ad shouting the words in a rasping, shaky voice. "I didn't really think too deep into it," Walker told BI. "I didn't check my phone for hours and then it blew up." @theveritywalker Hell #londonunderground #tube #london ♬ original sound - Hillary Star The video struck a chord online, racking up 630,000 likes at the time of publication. "It's so widely recognizable — it's got to be one of the UK's biggest inside jokes," Walker said. From organic meme to marketing strategy While Jet2 didn't respond to requests for comment from BI on the trend, the airline did help fuel it back in April. A TikTok video posted at the time showed cabin crew and airport staff lip-syncing, dancing to the jingle, and striking influencer-style poses. The caption invited users to participate, promising a Jet2holidays voucher of £1,000 for the best submission using the jingle tagged with #Jet2Challenge. @jet2 NOTHING BEATS A JET2HOLIDAY 🗣️🗣️ And RIGHT NOW we've got a BRAND NEW SOUND (that's better than the last one...) for you to get lip-syncing to... Yep we've seen you all! 🎤 You could even #WIN a £1,000 Jet2holidays voucher with your video 🤩 Simply upload our NEW SOUND from THIS video, use the #Jet2Challenge hashtag and tag us @jet2, and post to your account making sure we can see it (i.e. not on private!) and we will pick our favourite one! Get creative, you could be the winner! 🏆 Upload your entry before midnight on 19th May 2025 to be in with a chance! And of course, remember our sale is now on... Save £100pp with a myJet2 account!* *T&Cs apply. Full T&Cs can be found on our website. #Jet2 #Jet2holidays #NothingBeatsAJet2holiday #DarlingHoldMyHand #Viral #Funny #Trend #Trending ♬ original sound - jet2 Hannah Bennett, TikTok's head of travel, told BI the trend took off because it hit all the right viral notes: "An instantly recognizable sound, a trend anyone could jump on, classic British wit and a dash of summer nostalgia." She added that Jet2, Jess Glynne, and voice artist Zoe Lister all engaged "authentically, " so it was "no surprise the trend has burst off the platform to become a full-blown cultural moment." According to TikTok, the Jet2 voiceover has been featured in more than 2 million video creations and has racked up billions of views globally. This isn't Jet2's first brush with online virality. In December 2022, Jet2 launched an ad set to Glynne's "Hold My Hand." By 2024, the song had quietly become meme material, with TikTok users ironically pairing it with travel chaos and holiday fails. But April 2025 appeared to mark the first time Jet2 tried to take control of the trend — rebooting the jingle, framing it as a challenge, and offering cash incentives to keep the momentum going. The jingle's virality even reached the halls of political power. In a video posted to X on Tuesday, the official White House account used the Jet2 audio to soundtrack a clip showing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents escorting detained individuals onto a deportation flight. The clip drew swift backlash online — including from Jess Glynne herself. In an Instagram story overlaying the White House's post, she wrote: "This post honestly makes me sick. My music is about love, unity, and spreading positivity — never about division or hate." The ad's release timing was no accident Media and marketing analysts said Jet2's move fits a familiar playbook for turning memes into brand wins. Tony D. Sampson, a reader in digital communication at the University of Essex's Business School, said the Jet2 jingle checks all the boxes for holiday-season virality: It's repetitive, "amusingly annoying," and ideal for subversive parody. "It is the holiday season after all, so this outbreak of virality is perfectly timed and primed for silly holiday videos," he told BI. Sampson added that social algorithms tend to reward emotionally charged or playful content. "The churning of content through platform algorithms also tends to favour high-intensity emotion," he said. "So yes, alongside more horrific and shocking content, irony, nostalgia, cuteness, silliness, and widespread stupidity tend to spread well." David Meerman Scott, the author of "The New Rules of Marketing and PR," described Jet2's marketing video as a "smart move." "Often brands ignore what's happening on social media and treat it as just an outbound," he said. "The fact that they're watching and responded is great." He suggested that the airline's choice to release the video on TikTok was key. "When the time is right to respond to a meme, I always suggest doing so in the same media where it caught fire," he said. "If a video goes viral, respond with your own video."
