While SA advertising creatives slap themselves loudly on the back for signing up London actor Idris Elba as the face of Oude Meester brandy, its starting to look like they backed the wrong horse as Idris’s shot at the big time – playing Nelson Mandela in Long Walk to Freedom – bombs in bioscopes. The Guardian reports that the “Mandela film failed because 12 Years a Slave ‘sucked up all the guilt about black people.’ ”

William Nicholson, who spent 15 years writing the film, makes some totally outrageous statements that will have Distell brand managers pulling out their hair. The Guardian reports “of the former South African’s speeches, Nicholson said: ‘All but one … were made up by me because his own are so boring. I know it sounds outrageous to say a thing like that, but when he came out of prison he made a speech and, God, you fell asleep.’ ”

Where does the Guardian get off calling Nelson “a former South African”? Surely now that he’s an angel, he is a South African angel. This is the problem with hiring foreign celebrities to front an intrinsically South African brand. Lots of unintended baggage comes with. What a tragedy for Oude Meester and SA brandy.

There’s a South African old master waiting in the wings. Andre Brink is a writer surely destined for a Nobel Prize and he’s already a member of the Brandy Foundation. Time to refocus the campaign, manne.