Old Beer Ads #1 - Greene King IPA (1987-88)

Ah, those days.  I lived a speck-on-the-landscape village in Bedfordshire.  It had one pub. Which I was too young to go in.  Oh well.  Still, I had all those catchy ads on the telly.  Like this one from Bury St. Edmunds "finest", Greene King.

The unfortunate man in this advert is one Neil Innes, late of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.  I can only assume his motivations for doing this were because the royalties for "I'm The Urban Spaceman" were running out, and those for The Raggy Dolls had yet to come in.  Taking in offensive Asian cultural stereotypes, a pop at the best footballer in the world at the time and blatant sexism, it remains a classic of alcohol advertising of the 1980s.

Still, we have to give credit for Greene King for admitting one thing - the only way to get people to actually want to drink GK IPA is to chain them up against a wall until delirious.  If only other brewers of dubious beers were so honest

Here Come The Lizards

First of all, shall we start will a small video? It'll explain a few things.

Now you've seen that, I think we can agree that we've all seen the lizards at some point.  I for one remember my own infamous "3 bottles of Orkney Dark Island Reserve and 8 whiskies" evening that led me being gently dragged away by the kind fellows at Liverpool Street Station.  I saw the whole reptile house that night.  Still, I didn't let it put me off.

There are many beer blogs out there in the world.  They mainly concentrate on the taste of the stuff; tours of local licensed premises; the evils of pubcos and megabreweries; the shortcomings of brewers of boring brown beer/evil craft keg (delete as applicable).  Needless to say you will find none of that here.  The world is a miserable enough place already.  I thought beer was supposed to be fun.

But my general point is this - fun is a serious business.  As a great man once said, I'm serious about what I do, but not necessarily the way I go about it.  I hope, dear reader if you're out there, to make you laugh.  But also to have an actual point behind the nonsense.  Because that's the most successful kind of humour.

Oh, and before you ask, I like paisley.