A local authority has been mocked for spending almost £2,000 on a mural of King Charles III which has been compared to a Spitting Image puppet.
The street art was pitched on hoardings in Northampton town centre to celebrate the accession of the new King.
The dazzlingly embellished mural features images of both King Charles and the late Queen and it was commissioned by Northampton Town Council, but after its unveiling, locals were quick to mock the graffiti’s likeness to its subject.
It’s not the first time a royal mural has attracted mirth. In 2017, a floral tribute to Princess Diana in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, went viral after it was branded nightmarish and downright awful by residents.
While elsewhere, a mural of the Queen in Hounslow last September was roasted over its accuracy.
One local thought Northampton’s homage to the King looked more like a Spitting Image puppet, another said it seemed like he’d been on the Scotch, while a third thought both images would terrify children.
Neighbour Kerry Bellingham, 33, who lives nearby, said that there was no doubt the place needed a bit of colour but she feared it made them look a bit of a laughing stock.
She said that the one of the Queen wasn’t too bad but that she’s seen people having selfies with the Charles one while giggling their heads off, and she said that it just didn’t look like him. That his eyes were weirdly too close together, his hair was all wrong and it’s only the ears which really tell that it’s him.
She added that she felt that the money could have been spent much better elsewhere in the town, and that she wasn’t anti-royalist but that it was just an appalling likeness of the King.
Another local said, to be fair, it wasn’t the best painting in the world, and said that they didn’t agree with the money spent on it. There were better things to spend money on at a time like this.
The local said that it was also on a plank of wood which was deteriorating and that if they were going to do it, they should’ve done it well and put it somewhere more permanent.
Other locals took to social media where one web user said it was difficult to tell who the person painted next to the late Queen even was.
What a waste of money it was, but then that’s typical of local council incompetence.
It’s not fit for purpose and whoever in the council agreed to this, they’re not fit for purpose either, and it’s more than just an unsightly mural, it’s monstrous, and Northampton Council can ill afford to spend money on something like this.
But regardless of whether this image is any good or not, why are councils permitted to extinguish money so readily?
No money to repair our highways but plenty of money for ridiculous projects like this!
This is a terrible picture. It’s more like a Monty Python-style image and they should paint over it, and it would have been far better to have spent the money filling in some potholes around the town, and to think someone got paid for this junk!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 