If you’ve been on social media in the last few weeks you’ve probably heard a certain Jet2holidays meme audio. It quickly went viral, largely due to a TikTok trend, and people are only just realising the familiar voice behind it.
The voiceover star is Zoë Lister, who played the role of Zoe Carpenter in Hollyoaks from 2006 to 2010. After that she was a writer for Hollyoaks and some children’s TV dramas for 10 years but today she is most recognisable for voicing a Jet2holidays advert that features the catchy line ‘nothing beats a Jet2 holiday’ with Jess Glynne’s song Hold My Hand playing in the background. Zoë told Mirror she recorded this voiceover around 18 months ago but in the last few weeks it has “just exploded around the world".
A TikTok trend has dominated the platform and it involves short clips of travel blunders and funny holiday moments with the Jet2 campaign soundtrack.
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There are currently 1.4 million TikTok videos using the Jet2 jingle and more than 192,000 clips using the hashtag Jet2holidays.
What’s more mind-blowing is Jet2holidays is a UK operator that only flies to destinations across Europe but the voiceover has reached global online audiences.
Zoë, who has worked on the Jet2holidays voiceovers for seven years, was completely taken by surprise when she noticed the audio had gone viral.
She said she is “permanently astonished” and has received messages from people across the world.
The 43-year-old mum-of-two, who grew up in Redditch in the Midlands, added: “TikTok is amazing because it reaches so many people and so many different kind of audiences are on it and responding to things and making really funny content with whatever they can find and you know I guess the voiceover because it’s so relentlessly upbeat it lends itself well to parody videos.”
Zoë has even been asked to perform the voiceover on stage at festivals in the UK and shared she thinks last year was “Brat girl summer” and “this year is like Jet2 girl summer".
She explained she first started being sent videos in October of people using the Jet2holidays voiceover on funny travel videos and she saw a post on TikTok or Instagram of someone dressed as Jess Glynne for Halloween and someone else dressed as a flight attendant who did the voiceover.
The funniest video Zoë has seen using the viral audio meme is one of a woman on a fast rollercoaster who gets hit in the chest by a flying seagull and then realises she needs to get the bird off her.
Zoë explained: “We (Brits) love to take the mickey out of things and finding everything funny basically but what has been surprising is the fact that the rest of the globe are in on it as well even though they don’t know what a Jet2 holiday is.”
The voiceover artist revealed that initially she was unsure how Jet2 felt about the viral nature of the meme and two weeks ago she was “crying” to her husband as she was worried that Jet2 might rebrand.
Luckily, she later found that Jet2 “have a great sense of humour” so she didn’t need to worry as it has “turned into the best ad campaign for years”.
Zoë’s career started as a singer and dancer for Butlins before she moved to London and became an actress, TV writer and began doing voiceovers.
She first got involved with Jet2 when they sponsored Love Island and then she ended up doing the whole campaign.
The mum-of-two has since done many different ad campaigns for Jet2 which has kept her busy and described it as “quite a gift of a job.”
Zoë also disclosed a new project she is working on inspired by the viral success of the Jet2 campaign: “I am going to launch a podcast and I think it’s going to be called Absurdly Camp Z Lister because I did ask Chat GPT what it was about the voiceover that people have so responded to and Chat GPT was like quite rude and said ‘the absurdly camp delivery’ and that phrase has really stuck with me and I’m like I’m just going to lean into this.”
