Nice and Serious and Project Everyone launch spoof payday loan ad starring Alex Macqueen

What do dodgy daytime TV adverts and the global debt crisis have in common? More than you'd think, according to Nice and Serious, who've teamed up with Project Everyone and CAFOD on a new campaign film that uses satire to skewer the world's most unethical lenders.

Titled Meet The World's Loan Sharks, the 90-second spoof ad stars Alex Macqueen – best known for his roles in The Thick of It, Rivals, and The Inbetweeners – as a slick, overzealous salesman peddling "unfair loans" to desperate customers. Only this time, the victims aren't individuals. They're entire low-income countries.

Created by Richard Curtis' Project Everyone in partnership with CAFOD, and produced by Nice and Serious, the campaign is launching ahead of this month's G20 summit. It aims to expose how private banks and hedge funds target poorer nations with exploitative interest rates, trapping millions in cycles of debt while richer nations look the other way.

CAFOD Ambassador Macqueen leans into the familiar tropes of early-2000s TV advertising: ill-fitting suit, cheap graphics, forced enthusiasm, and a slightly menacing grin. The nostalgic absurdity makes the message all the more powerful. Viewers are directed to unfairloans.com to learn more and join calls for fairer debt relief.

"The comparison to payday loan sharks perfectly captures the shockingly unethical and exploitative nature of the debt crisis," says Macqueen. "Those at the sharp end of poverty are forced into debt with scandalous interest rates just to survive, but the more comfortable can access reasonable loan arrangements. Clearly something has gone very wrong."

He adds: "With nearly half the world's population living in countries that spend more on interest repayments than they do on essential services like schools and hospitals, it's ordinary people who are most deeply impacted by this terrible unfairness.

"With the G20 imminent, now is the time to bring attention to a too-long-ignored outrage."

The film was written by Jim De Zoete and directed by Serafima Serfimova, whose tongue-in-cheek approach helped balance comedy and critique. "I've always believed that humour is a powerful way to talk about serious things. It disarms people and makes them listen in a different way," says Serafima. "Taking something as heavy as global debt and framing it through the world of early-2000s daytime TV adverts just felt right. It's absurd – but then again, so is the system."

The director drew on the period's iconography – "miracle products, dodgy loan offers, over-enthusiastic presenters" – to create a world that's both nostalgic and nauseating. "That bold, tacky aesthetic became the backbone of the film's style and tone," she explains. "At its core, Loan Sharks is about the ridiculousness of a system that traps poorer countries in endless debt while richer ones pretend to be helping. Because sometimes laughter isn't about making light of a problem – it's about shining a light on it."

The campaign will run across social media, with support from NGOs and influencers, and will also be screened at a special event for MPs at the Houses of Parliament.

Hannah Cameron, campaign director at Project Everyone, describes how the creative approach was about finding a new way into a complex issue. "We wanted to find a simple way to tell the story of the global debt crisis and its human impact. With the help of Alex Macqueen's dodgy loan shark character, we did just that," she says. "I hope it leads to increased understanding and public support for new solutions."

CAFOD's lead economist Maria Finnerty adds a sobering reminder of what's at stake: "If predatory lending is illegal in the UK, we must not allow it to continue globally.

"The UK could change the law tomorrow at zero cost to taxpayers, solving 90% of the problem and benefiting millions of people overnight. All that's missing is the political will."

Equal parts funny and furious, Meet The World's Loan Sharks proves that sometimes the best way to expose injustice is to hold up a mirror, even if it looks like a cheap TV set from 2003.