- Graham Norton, Stephen Fry, Ian McKellen.
Some of the UK's most beloved national treasures
are gay men, but what if I was to tell you that two of them
are gay meerkats?
Hello, I'm Rowan Ellis, and welcome to my magnum opus.
This is a love story 10 years in the making.
Yes, you heard me correctly.
2009 was the first time
we were introduced to these two icons, Aleksandr and Sergei.
For the people who are not from the UK,
let me give a tiny bit of background.
These two are the protagonists in a series of adverts
by a UK company called Compare the Market,
which they used to just compare car insurance,
and now compares a whole tonne of stuff.
The premise being that they ran a website
called Compare the Meerkat,
but their website was in jeopardy, you see.
A lot of humans were going there mistakenly thinking
that it was a website, Compare the Market.
So they took to our TV screens to explain the difference.
Now here's the thing.
Their relationship has never been officially
and explicitly confirmed by Compare the Market.
So it is my task,
neigh, my life's mission,
to prove it to you today.
Let's begin.
So I've compiled my research into a document.
I have pictures, video files, text,
and I'm gonna share it with you today.
I have a full timeline of their relationship
with (laughs) copious evidence.
So, first of all, let's start at the beginning.
When did they first meet?
Well,
Aleksandr, a meerkat of high-renowned,
whose family business, Compare the Meerkat,
had been booming, wanted to get into the online space,
but he didn't have the technical know-how to do that.
He comes across Sergei.
He is a Russian meerkat astronaut who had landed on the moon
ahead of the American meerkats at NASA.
It is later proven after he was rewarded
with a beautiful medal that he faked
the whole thing in his garage,
but still, Aleksandr, impressed with his ingenuity
and technical know-how to be able to pull
something like that off, invited him to join the company.
Now, the keen advert watchers amongst you
may say Rowan, what are you talking about?
That wasn't in any of the adverts.
Where did you even get these from?
Did you do them yourself?
First of all, thank you for assuming
that I had this kind of artistic ability,
and second of all,
I am no mere advert watcher.
No, I am beyond that now.
I have been consumed with the eternal question,
are these meerkats gay?
And so I paid four pounds and 99 pence to buy the E-book
of Aleksandr's autobiography, "A Simples Life."
- Simples (squeaks).
- Interesting fact, this is actually sort of hinted
at, at the adverts, the keen advert watchers
amongst you will have spotted.
For example, Sergei writes on a blackboard
some extremely rocket-y science things during one advert,
and also, his very cute, space-themed pyjamas.
For the adverts themselves done a few years later,
they'd been living and working together for some time now,
although not at this point, in a romantic relationship,
but they are comfortable enough
that Aleksandr would take baths at the same time
as Sergei is in the room.
Now,, Aleksandr doesn't seem awkward, or embarrassed,
he's confident, brash, and more than a little selfish,
but Sergei on the other hand,
well, he can't look at Aleksandr while he's in the bath,
even when he's totally covered by bubbles,
Sergei feels nervous, does Aleksandr not care if he looks?
Maybe because he wants him to look?
Or because he's so uninterested in Sergei,
it doesn't even cross Aleksandr's mind to be worried,
and why is Sergei even thinking about this?
Why does he care what Aleksandr thinks?
He totally just, and he doesn't care what Aleksandr,
Sergei throws himself into his work.
The issues with the business are mounting
as Compare the Market customers
continue to crash their site.
In the end, the stress and obsession
with his work is too much.
Even Aleksandr has noticed.
Sergei thinks Aleksandr is going to fire him
for being too old.
He starts to cry, but he isn't sure why.
Maybe losing the job, but maybe, losing a friend,
or even confirmation that Aleksandr
really does just think of him as too old to be any good,
but instead, Aleksandr buys him a brand new computer.
Feeling flustered
by the show of emotion from Sergei,
Aleksandr jokes that it's just so he can keep
him working twice as hard,
but after all of this stress,
Sergei decides that it's time to move on,
to another job that will afford him more dignity.
The circus, but rather than forget about him
like Sergei is sure Aleksandr will, Aleksandr finds him,
and calls out in the middle of a show,
asking Sergei to and I quote, "come home."
Despite himself, Sergei can't refuse what he really wants,
and they return home together.
This marks a turning point in their friendship.
They spend more social time together,
playing "Twister," joining a band,
even meeting Sergei's totally normal,
and absolutely straight meerkat hero, Gary Barlow.
It's going well, even if nothing happens between them,
they're still friends after all,
but then, one stormy night, a baby arrives on their doorstep
and everything goes to hell.
This is baby Oleg.
After only a few minutes' hesitation,
they welcome him into their home.
They start co-parenting together, they feed him,
they clothe him, they decorate a whole nursery,
and they even tuck him in at night,
together, as a family.
Little things that baby Oleg does,
little silly things that Aleksandr will say,
"Aha, he takes after you, Sergei," and at one point,
Aleksandr refers to baby Oleg as part of the family,
and Sergei, his heart stops for a second.
Does that mean, he, Sergei, is part of the Orlov family too?
Soon, they take their first family holiday together.
To Africa, to show baby Oleg his heritage.
They stay together in a small tent
with only one visible bed, and it is torture for Sergei.
Everything that Sergei wants,
but can't quite bring himself to take,
in case it upsets the balance that they've created,
then, in a devastating turn of events,
baby Oleg decides he wants to stay in Africa,
to be with meerpups his own age.
As they walk away for the final time,
he calls out, "Goodbye, Papa Aleksandr.
"Goodbye, Auntie Sergei."
It's too much for him, the tears start to fall
as they drive away.
In an attempt to escape the hole in their lives
left by baby Oleg, they move from their mansion in Meerkova
to their mansion in Los Angeles to start
a movie-part of their business,
in order to make films to, again, persuade people
to stop using their website.
The budding family they developed over the past few months
was shattered, even as their business thrived,
allowed them to rub shoulders with the Hollywood elite.
Sergei could feel his dreams
of a family with Aleks slipping away.
In some ways worse that Aleks seem to be respecting
him more in business, taking him to business meetings,
laughing at his jokes.
He decides that he needs to get over his crush
once and for all.
He decides he needs to start dating for the first time
in 30 years.
In September, Aleksandr notes how Sergei
seems to be wearing a new aftershave,
and taking mysterious phone calls
from someone he claims is a wrong number.
Sergei has given up on Aleksandr
ever returning his affections.
So at the start of October,
he comes down the stairs of their L.A.
mansion with a bunch of roses, and awkwardly tells Aleksandr
he's going to the movies on a date without him.
The door opens to reveal the date
is none other than Nicole Kidman.
The first date seems to go well,
because Sergei and Nicole Kidman start to date,
and eventually, Sergei starts referring to her
as his girlfriend,
and at the start, Aleksandr doesn't really seem to mind.
In fact, he tweets this,
"Sergei not stop smiling, and say he have butterflies
"in his tummy, is probably indigestion."
He jokes, #SergeiHotDate,
but then suddenly, almost overnight, something changes.
Aleksandr, when he tweets, isn't supportive at all.
So something has happened between the start of November
and the 12th of November,
what is it?
His Twitter gave me all the clues
that I needed.
On the 9th of November, 2015,
they went dancing together.
They're even photographed together.
Now, I don't know what happened on that dance floor.
I can only speculate.
Did they kiss?
Did they almost kiss?
Just look into each other's eyes,
and find a common and unspoken understanding
about what those long years living and working,
raising a child, and moving across the world together
really meant to them both?
Who knows, but what I do know is that Aleks realised
his feelings for Sergei that night,
and nothing, nothing
would ever be the same again.
We can see in this next tweet,
something has shifted.
Aleksandr, only days afterwards,
and with no tweets in between,
"Sergei is out on hot date, I don't mind being alone,
"by myself, without him, I don't miss him at all."
He is a strong, independent meerkat,
but look how sad he is.
The lady, as they say,
doth protest too much.
This all comes to a head in December of 2015,
just a few weeks later, when Aleksandr crashes a date
between Sergei and Nicole Kidman,
to desperately ask for Sergei to choose between them.
Over the next few weeks, come and I'll show you here,
Aleksandr begins tweeting.
Starts off a bit passive aggressive,
"I am assume you not come home for dinner tonight."
He hasn't said where he's gonna be.
The next one, "I don't usually write letter to Santa,
"but this year, I really want something for Christmas,
"my cinema buddy back."
He's been driven to desperate lengths.
Then a series of tweets in response to tweets of Sergei's,
which have since been deleted.
"My advice is choose successful beautiful person
"who appreciates you for who you really are.
"That's right, #ChooseAleksandr."
"Sergei, have you lost your marbles?
"I am only one who accept you as you are. #ChooseAleksandr."
Could this be accept for who you are?
Appreciate for who you are?
A coded reference to Sergei's bisexuality.
Finally, on New Year's Day
of 2016,
an advert
is aired, asking who will he, Sergei, choose?
Stunning talented Hollywood A-lister, Nicole Kidman,
or his old friend, Aleksandr?
And choose Sergei does.
He chooses Aleksandr.
Finally, our boys are together.
They go on their first date, to the cinema, of course.
After all this time, they finally both know
how they feel about each other,
but their story is only just beginning.
So for the next year, all of the adverts
are just them going on dates to the cinema.
That is all it is, it's just a series of their dates.
That's what's happening with the adverts.
Online, however, on Twitter, we come to what I like to refer
to as the Year of Shitposting,
in which they just tweet like a gay couple,
who is taking the mickey out of each other.
Some classic examples being, on April Fool's Day,
"Ladies and gentlemen, terrible news,
"Sergei has quit, I wish him all the best
"in his new IT department,"
followed hours later by, "April Fool's.
"Mwa-ha-ha, Sergei isn't going anywhere.
"He will never leave me."
We also have a kind of a funny one
from Valentine's up there, you know, Aleksandr
complaining he didn't get a card from Sergei.
Aleksandr does a lot of ribbing on Sergei's fashion choices.
You know, he dug up a swimsuit from a few years ago,
for the family getaway, still referring to it
as a family getaway when they go away together,
because they are family to each other.
"I think some things should stay buried," ha-ha-ha.
And one of my personal favourites,
"I would make a snowman, but I already have Sergei.
"He white, round, and does nothing."
This to me, so clearly, a queer couple
ripping the shit out of each other on Twitter.
So in the summer of 2016, they describe to go on
what Aleksandr describes as a family road trip,
and then when Sergei says, "but we don't have a family."
He says oh, that's okay, because I have enlisted the help
of Macauley Culkin to round out that dynamic.
They co-parent the former child star
like they did with baby Oleg.
We also see that they still have a picture of baby Oleg
in their camper van, even though they didn't get the camper
van itself until a year after they left
him in Africa.
You see how all of this is adding together.
The dates that they're going on.
The references to themselves as a family.
The shitposting, like only queer couples can do,
but we also have some really interesting references.
Come over here.
So, here on this board, we have the references
which are to movies.
All of these movies are romantic movies.
We have "When Harry Met Sally," we have "Casablanca,"
we have "Titanic" as well,
all of these things
in reference to them and their relationship.
So this road trip lasts until Christmas,
when they finally return home to their L.A. mansion
because Sergei tells Aleksandr
he's feeling a little homesick.
While there, they continue to go on dates of course,
including one on a private yacht
complete with the same type of roses
that Sergei took on his dates with Nicole.
Well Aleksandr says,
"this is the life, Sergei, just you and me, and"
before choking and having to be rescued by Sergei
while impersonating the iconic bow-of-the-ship
moment from "Titanic."
They are so used to being there for each other,
that in another movie reference,
when Sergei takes just a day off,
and forgets to tell Aleksandr about it,
Aleksandr looks around the house,
replaying a scene from "Bridget Jones"
where he plays I'm "All By Myself" on repeat
and eats his weight in pints of ice cream.
They eventually return home to their L.A. mansion in 2018,
where, on a memorable occasion, Aleksandr teases Sergei
by talking about all of the Hollywood A-list men
that he could take as his cinema date.
He talks about Bruce Willis, Denzel Washington,
Brad Pitt, and then laughs saying,
"I'm only pulling your tail, Sergei, come on."
As if almost a reference to that time before
when Sergei had had to choose between
a Hollywood A-lister and Aleksandr,
and had of course had chosen Aleksandr,
Aleksandr promising the same back, in a beautiful moment.
So, everything remained pretty much the same
until October of this year, 2019,
it had been
three years
since that fateful decision
on New Year's of 2016 where he chose Aleksandr,
and they began their relationship.
In this advert, in October of 2019, we open,
not on our two protagonists, but on the village
the one we left baby Oleg all those years ago.
He's playing with Ayana, his friend,
when suddenly bulldozers crash into the screen,
destroying their home, and forcing them to flee.
Baby Oleg grabs only one thing,
in the millisecond they have to escape, a postcard,
from Aleksandr and Sergei that says,
"We'll always be here for you,"
with a picture of them both in San Francisco on the front.
The two meerpups travel to America to find their dads,
but after days of searching, and no luck,
they finally give up, but Oleg drops
the postcard from the Golden Gate Bridge
only for it to fall right into the path
of Aleksandr and Sergei.
"Papa," he cries, "Auntie Sergei."
They run into each other's arms,
and then, under the tagline of Bring Your Family Together,
we see them going for a meal,
going to the cinema, and taking a beautiful family portrait,
and so, this is what all of this has been leading to,
all of my research, we've gone across this entire timeline,
spanning 10 years, we've seen them as colleagues, as friends
We've seen them grow and develop into something more.
We have seen them raising childs together.
Finally, the final chapter
so far, in the story
of these two British icons.
They're there,
together, in love,
with two baby meerkats
that they're gonna be looking after as a family,
in the queerest, god damn city in America, San Francisco.
Now, at the end of all of this,
I speak directly to you, Compare the Market.
I solved your clues.
I trawled through their tweets.
I watched every advert,
and I bought your four pound 99 autobiography.
You can admit it now.
I've solved the puzzle that you laid down for us.
My quest is complete.
Sergei and Aleksandr are in love,
and I realise now, what it was trying to tell us,
because at the end of all of this, I realised
it was, and always has been,
simples.