Why Ringo Starr's Pizza Hut Commercial Never Made Sense

Using a celebrity to sell a product is about as old as the idea of celebrities. British actress Lillie Langtry was the first spokesperson to appear in ads back in 1882 when she participated in a campaign for Pears Soap. Since then, companies have looked to famous faces to help them sell almost everything, including pizza. And who better to sell you a pizza than one of the most famous musicians of the 20th century? That had to be somewhere in the heads of the Pizza Hut ad executives who put Ringo Starr in a commercial in 1995.

It seems entirely reasonable to use a familiar face like Starr to sell pizza. The man was one of the Beatles, still considered by many to be the greatest rock band in history. However, if you think about it too much, it starts to make less and less sense. Never mind that pizza and Starr have nothing to do with one another — that can be forgiven. Sometimes celebrities endorse unusual products. But Starr has never eaten pizza. As bizarre as it sounds, he explained on Jimmy Kimmel's talk show in 2025 that due to several severe allergies, he's never even attempted to eat it.

The commercial is for Pizza Hut's stuffed crust pizza and it features Starr discussing how the time has come for people to eat their pizza crust first. Then he proposes telling "the lads" about it ... only for some reason, the lads turn out to be three-quarters of the Monkees.

In the Pizza Hut commercial, Starr obviously never bites into the pizza from the front or through the crust, despite the latter being the whole point. And he concludes by meeting up with a band he was never a part of. This is meant as some sort of joke, but the fact that John Lennon had died well before the commercial was filmed makes it seem odd to pretend he was referring to the other Beatles at all.

Given Starr's food allergies, he may not be the best choice of spokesperson for many foods, not just pizza. He also told Kimmel he's never had a curry, something highly unusual for a Brit given how popular curries are in the United Kingdom.

Starr is famously a vegetarian. He attributes his vigor to the diet and told Rolling Stone in 2018 that he eats broccoli with every meal. He also frequently eats blueberries. When Tasting Table covered the favorite foods of the Beatles, we also discovered Starr's affinity for baked beans. 

When lunch rolls around, Starr enjoys a sandwich now and then, which is why he's not strictly vegan but vegetarian. He once told Stephen Colbert he loves a toasted cheese sandwich. Goat cheese only, because he doesn't eat anything from cows. (That sounds a bit tastier than fellow Beatle George Harrison's favorite Marmite sandwich.) Ringo's also a fan of apples over oranges and prefers regular flat water to sparkling. If blueberries and water even need a spokesperson, maybe they can work a deal.