Barenaked Ladies were featured on NME.com today in a cool article about familiar faces from album covers.

NME took some time out from criticising everyone and anyone today, and published a pretty cool post about the stars of album covers from years gone by. As well as featuring the porn star from Blink 182‘s Enema of the State and the infamous baby from Nirvana‘s Nevermind, they included a piece on the ginger-haired kid from BNL’s Born on a Pirate Ship.

Dispelling the myth that the child is a young Jim Creeggan once and for all, NME caught up with the now-27 year old Marcus Priest, who lives right here in the UK.

You can read the whole article here, and below is the excerpt on BNL:

Barenaked Ladies – ‘Born On A Pirate Ship’

And then there’s that little boy donning a newspaper pirate hat on the cover of Barenaked Ladies’ 1996 album ‘Born On A Pirate Ship’.

Snapper Neil Prime-Coote told NME that the little boy (Marcus Priest), who came from a British family that had just moved to Toronto, was the son of his aunt’s boss. “I wanted a ginger-haired kid,” he said. “I shot about seven different kids, but none of them worked well. I had diner with my aunt who told me her new boss had two ginger-haired kids. I shot both of them together and apart, but the band felt the single shot worked well.”

Here’s an outtake from the shoot, featuring both of the children:

And a rather disturbing photo of BNL he shot, just for the hell of it:

And what does Marcus remember from the day? He told me:

My brother and I simply turned up. I think the photo shoot was in a local park, we wore some crazy clothes and messed around in pirate hats. My brother and I were more excited about the $50 we received for the photo shoot.

And what’s he up to today? “I moved back to the UK from Canada with my family when I was 12. I’m now 27, living just outside of London in the UK with my beautiful wife and two amazing children (six months and two years old). I graduated from university and have used my psychology (undergraduate) and human resource management (post graduate) degrees to support my career in Human Resource Management, currently within the Pharmaceutical sector.”

Pretty cool, huh?

And in case you don’t get the meaning of the album cover, try saying ‘Born on a Pirate Ship’ pulling the same expression as young Marcus… How rude!