Old Beer Ads #15 - Oranjeboom (1983)

Continuing the lockdown-inspired practice of blog grave-robbing, I'm digging up a series I've not posted on for 5 years.  This is also partially inspired by the return of Van Der Valk to the UK's TV screens.

Belying it's current reputation a black-tinned cornershop-stocked super-strength filth, Oranjeboom pilsner was once quite popular in the UK, and was promoted with ads such as this, rammed full of all the Dutch stereotypes the copywriters could think of.  And as we all know, the only tune to come out of the Netherlands was "Eye Level", used as the theme tune to the aforementioned Amsterdam-set detective show.  One presumes the agency couldn't get a whole Edam cheese to ride a bicycle next to a canal, so they went for animated kitchen tiles.  No doubt a similar effect could be acheived by drinking several cans of Oranjeboom 8.5 at home.

Ironically, despite the Low Countries overload presented here, the end of the ad proudly proclaims it's now brewed in the UK, joining the plethora of faux-Eurolagers that were depressingly common in the 80s.  Just like "Eye Level" itself, a 'Dutch' tune orchestrated by a man from Market Harborough.

As a bonus, here's the Simon Park Orchestra on Top Of The Pops in 1973, when the BBC had to have them on as "Eye Level" had got to #1.  And of course they had to wear orange jumpers.  Because Holland, y'know?

Old Beer Ads #14 - Ruddles (1993)

Believe it or not, there was a time when Ruddles was a highly regarded beer, rather than the go-to cheap filth at Wetherspoons. Even more surprisingly for an independent brewery, they had a TV advertising budget. And if you had such a thing, what better course of action that to give £50,000 of said budget to Vivian Stanshall, ex-leader of the Bonzo Dog Band and notoriously unreliable pisshead.

Stanshall, possibly when a bit more sober, cooked this one up in his flat in Muswell Hill, roughly based on his Rawlinson End work and an old Edward Lear poem you may recognise.  Extravagantly hiring Dawn French to be unreconisably made-up as Sir Henry Rawlinson, it's a perfect example of money-no-object advertising excess.

It kept Stanshall going though. Not a drinker of Real Ale, he spent a large proportion of the money on recordings for Warner Brothers (yet to be released due to rights hell) and vodka.

Unwell with alcoholism and tranquiliser addiction, and indeed only 18 months from death, Stanshall spent a lot of time blotto and as such this as took far longer than normal to get in the can. More money spent. It's possibly an exaggeration that these events made Ruddle vulnerable to the takeover from Greene King a few years later, but it makes you think.

So Viv, it's all your fault. Still, thanks for "The Canyons Of Your Mind".

So, No Hammond Organ Then

Many months ago when I started this blog, I did a series on old beer ads. Pretty much without exception, I found them ridiculous, and mercilessly took the piss out of them. There is of course a reason why beer commercials are ridiculous. It's called the Advertising Standards Agency.

This is possibly slightly unfair. The ASA is basically there to make sure advertisers don't make dubious or blatantly untrue claims about their products. But with alcoholic beverages, the rules are somewhat different. They're not allowed to tell the truth

You cannot say drinking alcohol will make you more popular. You cannot say alcohol will increase your chances of sexual success. You cannot even say alcohol gets you drunk. If you even imply any of this, your ad will be banned.

Such a phenomenon has just happened to Captain Morgan.  Apparently, the ASA Youth think that you shouldn't encourage young people to go out in the middle of the week with their friends where they may, the horror, consume intoxicating drinks. I mean, what? Are these youngsters children of diehard Salvation Army types? Do they have any idea what real young people do to relax in 2014? Even twenty years ago, I can tell you a lot more happened than a quiet chat over a couple of Single Morgans Spiced & Cokes.

With the well-documented fall in alcohol consumption by the under-25s, the likes of Diageo are probably justified in trying anything to increase business, but is that ad really such a grave threat to the Youth Of Today? Whatever happened to allowing people to make mistakes and to learn from them?

I'll be surprised if today's young people ever manage to grow up at all.

Old Beer Ads #13 - San Miguel (2000s)

Of all the "continental" lagers, none get on my tits more than San Miguel.  Whatever you say about Peroni, it is at least brewed in Italy.  It may not have taste, but it does have history.

In an attempt to give San Miguel it's desired image, here Scottish & Newcastle had that old beer ad standby - a sexy woman performing for a man's approval.  It's a good job I'm a beer blogger and not a feminist blogger.  You'd have to read paragraph upon paragraph of criticism of this one.

But for me, the most implausible part is the fact the dancer pours water on her feet, then drinks the beer.  In my experience, vice versa would have been better.  Water is more refreshing than SM and SM is generally served far colder.

Still, I'm grateful for Carlsberg UK's (the current owners of San Miguel) endless pushing of the stuff.  It gives me a chance to point out that this exotic, sun-kissed lager is made in the tropical climes of....Northampton.

Old Beer Ads #12 -Tennent's (1990)

Ah, Scotland.  Been there many times.  Sampled many fine malt whiskies, and drank dozens of Harviestoun Bitter & Twisteds.  And what, perchance, are the most popular locally-produced beverages of choice with the Scots?  Well...Glen's Vodka and Tennent's Lager.  More of the decent stuff for me, I suppose.  But really.

In this somewhat peculiar commercial (unlikely events depicted in ads to promote beer?  Who'd'a thought it?), an expatriate Scot ditches his London business life to go back to Edinburgh, simply because people are all bastards and he misses drinking Tennent's with his mates.  I presume he took the train, as he's seen walking down Princes Street.  Possibly he even started before he got off, like the eight Scots I shared a train with in 2009 who were also drinking Tennents, if I remember correctly.  I thanked my bottle of Glenfiddich 18 for getting me through the 2 hour discussion of their sex lives.

What will happen to Mr. Jock Repatriated after this is not recorded.  Perhaps, as he no longer has any means of income,  he will start on the other famous product of the Wellpark Brewery and end up with a Purple Court Appearance...

Let There Be Beer?

Ah, those wonderful multinational macrobrewers.  They're worried about us Brits.  Well, actually, I doubt they give a toss about us.  But they're certainly worried about us not drinking enough beer.  Caught between the pincer of "Evil Binge Drink Britain" bad publicity and lack of disposable income, we're simply drinking less.  So, like a group otherwise warring feudal Lords, they have marshalled their efforts to confront the greater threat.  And the result - the new beer promotion campaign "Let There Be Beer".

Oh dear.  Where to start?

The name of this effort is an obvious allusion to the song, most famously done by Nat King Cole in 1961.  It seems the big brewers have realised beer has a somewhat unsophisticated image, and are trying to get people to associate with smooth, relaxed surroundings, possibly with jazz playing in the background.  Try and imagine this in your head - a sharp-suited, clean-shaven urban gentleman, and he's posing artfully with one arm resting against the bar, slighty smiling with his eyes half-closed.  And he's holding a pint of Peroni.  Yes, imagine that.  And does it work?

Pete Brown has numerous things to say about "Let There Be Beer".  As a former adwanker, his views are not to be taken lightly.  But his amusing take is that, as the campaign is run by corporo-lager makers, they've come together to simply make a larger scale version of the bloody lager ads we've been seeing for 35 years.  Why not promote the hip crafty end of the beer world - the one that's seen the most sector growth in the last decade?

I can see why they haven't.  It's all very well giving attention to microbrewed cask ale and craft keg IPAs, but where is the "average" consumer going to find this stuff?  Spoons will do a few, but most large towns have pubs that subsist (as always) on the local favourites.  How many "average" pubs have Oakham Citra or DarkStar Espresso on the pumps?  And even if your bewildered "average" beer drinker comes across, say, Thornbridge/Sierra Nevada Twin Peaks on a keg font, what is he or she going to think when the barman tells them it's £3 a half?  

No, the macros are going to push what they've been pushing at us for years, simply because it's easiest and has the most brand recognition.  As an aside, any long-term denizen of craft beer places will know what happens when an "average" drinker accidently wanders into one in search of refreshment - they will look up and down the bar, look horribly confused and say "Haven't you got any Smooth/Guinness/Fosters?".  The barstaff will try to suppress their hilarity as they try and sell the customer a selection of (to them) completely unfamiliar beers.

It's quite possible that beer itself is going through the process of "category realignment".  As the mainstream drinker deserts it for wine or gin or whatever, the beer market will be left to beardy casketeers and flat-cap and flannel shirt IPA hipsters.  Mass produced beer, such as it exists, will be an indistinguishable means to an end.

Beer, if not dying, is moving.  And no amount of efforts by the macrobrewers to set it in concrete will change that.

Old Beer Ads #11 - Busch (1960s)

One of the lesser known things about Hanna-Barbera was, as well as churning out barely-animated Saturday morning cartoon fodder, they also did contract commercials for various companies. One presumes Mel Blanc and Daws Butler did not come cheap.  In this shocking clip from around 1967,  Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble reveal they are drinkers as well as smokers.

Fred and Barney have been given the boot from their gravel pit jobs by cantankerous Mr. Slate, and have decided to run a bar.  Remarkably, considering the only thing they serve is Busch (an Anheuser-Busch brand that's positioned lower than Budweiser), they are overrun by custom and end up exhausted and wishing for a life of rockbreaking again.  Thankfully, Mr. Slate, despite being apparently rich, enters Fred and Barney's bar for a mug of economy filth.  Due to the intoxicating properties of Busch (or the hallucinogenic effects of the chemicals AB put in the stuff), Slate rehires them.

This would not be allowed on TV today for so many reasons.  Characters with kid appeal promoting alcoholic beverages.  Implying that consuming beer will reduce inhibitions.  Saying Busch is "Bavarian" when it was actually made in St. Louis.  But lies and hideous lack of ethics aside, this is reasonable for 60s advertising, as it does make an attempt to entertain along with the shilling of commodity lager.

Maybe they should do this nowadays.  I'm sure SpongeBob would go on TV extolling the virtues of Goose Island IPA for enough snail food to keep Gary going.

Old Beer Ads #10 - Marston's Pedigree (1994)

Apologies for not posting the ad directly this time (couldn't find it on it's own on YouTube) - it starts on this video at 2:08.

I remember loving this ad at the time.  I was only 18 and wouldn't even have thought of drinking Pedigree at the time.  I'm just a sucker for cod-Victorian humour (as my purchase of this, this and this would suggest).  The animation and song style is nicked from the Oscar-winning short Great by Bob Godfrey, which I only realised when I saw it on Channel 4 a year later.  Much worse things to steal from, and it's the only beer commercial from the time I can still remember all the words to.

Marston's is not as well regarded in beer circles as it was 20 years ago,.  Whether for Fast Cask or "Gobbyhobbitgate" is moot point, but apparently Pedigree is not as good as it was even it's still Brewed The Burton Union Way (and, unlike many things since then, really still is Up Until The Present Day).  They still seem to be building new pubs, though, like this one near me.  Though it's doubtful they're the type of pub beer fans would really want to venture to.

Remember, it could be worse.  They could be like Greene King.  Good old John Marston...

Old Beer Ads #9 - Whitbread Best Bitter (1982)

There are so many Whitbread ads on YouTube that one day I hope to do a special post on them.  I've picked this one today for the rigorous and pertinent reason that it was the first result on the search box for "Whitbread Beer".

Of all the beer ads I've seen for this series, this is the one that has most made me think  "What the bloody hell was the ad agency on when they came up with this?".  Based on poem written about the Russo-Turkish war which later became popular in music halls (my father still sings it to himself to this day), they stuck beery lyrics on it which debated the relative merits of handled mugs and nonic glasses.  The sheer unlikelihood of a 19th Century Russian aristocrat and a "son of the prophet" drinking Whitbread bitter is not mentioned.  One can certainly assume, however, that the cocaine dealers of Soho made thousands during brainstorm and flipchart session at the agency.

But for fans of historical comedy, though, this is interesting.  The singer is Tim McInnerny, best known as Percy and Captain Darling on Blackadder, whereas Ivan Skavinsky Skavar is played by none less than Stephen Fry.  I would have put the capitalist sellout of left-wing alternative comedians a bit later than this, but since Mr. Fry was prepared to promote a brewery-gobbling, tradition-trashing corporate monster like Whitbread in 1982, it seems I will have to revise my opinions.

And to think they slagged off Ben Elton for working with Andrew Lloyd Webber twenty years later...

Old Beer Ads #8 - Carling Black Label (1993)

I'm celebration of the 70th Anniversary of the Dambusters raid (which round this way seems to be an excuse for Thwaites to promote Lancaster Bomber), I'm posting this old Carling Black Label ad (why did they drop the "Black Label"?  Was it what Bass thought was a "premium indicator" that this regular lout was undeserving of?).  If you were reading the popular press back then, the cliche was that German holidaymakers monopolised the sunbeds in Spanish resorts by getting up early and putting their towels on them.  The Brit Carling drinker here (who, of course,  hasn't even left his room) uses a famous tactic from "Britain's Finest Hour" to reserve his lager-swilling spot by the pool.

As far as early 90s Europhobia goes, this isn't actually all that bad.  My parents read The Sun, and the front page of that paper was inciting its readers to protest the EC at designated sites and shout "Up Yours, Delors!".  If they didn't, apparently, we would end up eating frogs legs and bratwurst for breakfast, and the great British cucumber would be abolished.  Or something.

Anyway, it's now 2013 and things have moved on.  As has beer advertising.  Hasn't it?

Old Beer Ads #7 - Hofmeister Lager (1983)

Lager was gaining popularity in the 80s, but had not yet succeeded in gaining the louty ascendancy it has today.  The big UK brewers wanted a slice of Carlsberg and Heineken's market and brewed their own brands along with getting the licences of "continental premium lagers".  In the belief that British drinkers preferred low-strength beers, most of these were rather low in ABV.  The business model was simple - knock up some adjunct-packed, flavour-free watery piss and bung a German-sounding name on it.  It worked for a time.

Hofmeister Lager was Scottish & Newcastle's attempt at this market.  For some reason, their ad agency cooked up commercials like this, starring cheek-faced bear George.  In an unlikely tale, here he leaves Bavaria to come to 1980s London in search of decent lager.  Yes, that's what I thought too.   These ads were stopped on the basis that a big, cuddly bear might entice children to drink.  How intoxicated the kiddywinks could have got on Hofmeister's 3.2% dishwater is open to debate.

The pissy-lager market is all but dead now, with only Skol of the major brands hanging on.  You can buy budget own-label supermarket lager, but at 2% what it's made from is anyone's guess.  Hofmeister itself died in 2003, an event so notable even the BBC website reported it.

One hopes that George himself was rescued by Animal Welfare, and was taken back to Germany.  He probably drinks Oettinger-Pils now.

Old Beer Ads #6 - Courage Best Bitter (1980)

This was one of the most famous beer ads of its time.  If I remember correctly from an old documentary, I watched years ago, Courage wanted to reassert their London heritage after many years of National-based filth-making. What better way to do it than do create a monochrome cockney fantasy pub and put a Chas & Dave soundtrack over it?  I think they dredged up some ancient lighting guy to do this (as few lighting directors of the time had experience of old-time B&W ambience).  Apparently, it looked awful while they were filming it.  But it came right on the print, as the old codger said it would all along.

Courage itself is long gone.  Flogged numerous times and subsequently dismembered, it's now merely a brand owned by Wells & Young.  I'm not sure if anyone misses them.  Amongst other crimes, they introduced Fosters into the UK, and even the Best Bitter was apparently a load of Cock too (pun!).

Fact #1 - The first record I bought was by Chas & Dave.  Yes, it was 'Snooker Loopy' in 1986.  In fact, I bought it three times as one 45 melted on the fire, and another one cracked.  Now you know why it was a hit. Also, the middle-eight of 'Snooker Loopy' was nicked from the 1963 hit "Don't You Think It's Time" by Mike Berry and the Outlaws (the bass player was one Chas Hodges Esq.).

Fact #2 - One of the heirs of the Courage Brewery was racing driver Piers Courage.  I visited his grave in Shenfield in 2009, as I was in town to see my girlfriend of the time.  The grave is not in the best of upkeep, sadly.  I thought at the time "Surely the Courage family must still be loaded after selling the brewery.  They should have kept the site in better nick than this".  I guess the great brewing families really were callous Tories after all.

Old Beer Ads #5 - Stones Bitter (1983)

Stones Bitter was a regular canned mainstay of my childhood years.  Every Christmas, my nan would stock up the cupboard below the drinks cabinets with it (and Woodpecker cider).  The only person I ever saw drinking it was Uncle John.  And he only ever had a couple on Boxing Day.  I presume it was the cheapest at the shop my grandparents went to.

For some reason, Stones was the most popular bitter in the country at one point.  Bass pushed it in a major way with this long-running ad campaign in the 80s.  Two (presumably from Sheffield) blokes wandered around the world, and found Stones Bitter in unlikely places.  And here is possibly the unlikeliest of all - Egypt.   Perhaps the market for golden English bitters was better in Islamic countries back in 1983.  Who knows?

One of the aforementioned blokes was Bernard Hill, who did these ads to pay whatever bills he had until he became famous enough not to need to do these things.  After that, Michael Angelis took his place for the rest of the run, as he tends to when more famous Liverpudlians think such populism is beneath them.

Bass themselves came to the opinion that such things were beneath them too.  The adverts were pulled in 1991 and marketing support for Stones was withdrawn throughout the decade and the brewery in Sheffield was shut in 1999.  The beers were contracted out to John Smiths (keg & can) and Everards (cask). Etc etc.  Stop me if you've heard this kind of thing before.

Does anyone drink canned bitter any more?  It must be years since I've seen that blindingly obvious orange Stones can emptily blowing round the town centre streets.

Old Beer Ads #4 - Webster's Yorkshire Bitter (1990)

The memory of Websters is now fading, even though it hasn't been gone all that long. I've heard the ads with the talking dray horses were reasonably popular in their day (and certainly more popular than those with Professional Cliched Yorkshireman, Frederick Sewards Trueman).  But I chose this particular one because it actually mentions the fact of the brewery being closed and shipped off a few years before it happened.

Like Boddingtons, Websters is a once famous and widespread brand that has died a slow death and vanished from memory once its home brewery closed.  Grand Metropolitan sold the place to Courage around the time this ad was out, and soon after they were bought out by Scottish & Newcastle.  Already having John Smith's in the portfolio (at the time outselling Websters by 300%), S&N saw no need for Websters to exist and shut the brewery in 1996 with the loss of 400 jobs.  If any of those newly made redundant workers had somehow seen this ad then, it would have left a taste more bitter than any pint of Pennine ale.

Apparently, you can still find Websters in Yorkshire somewhere.  The keg bitter is still being brewed by everyone's favourite contractors, Burtonwood.  You will not see it advertised or promoted anywhere. 

Talking horses and Yorkshire fast bowlers having better things to do, it seems.

Old Beer Ads #3 - Boddingtons (1993)

Amazing as it seems now, in the mid-1990s Boddingtons Bitter was the third best selling cask bitter and the best selling canned bitter in the UK.  Such success was mostly built on the success of advertisments like this.  They all had the same basic plot.  30 seconds of some lavishly shot glamorous situations, and then a few seconds revealing it was actually about Mancunians drinking beer.

Personally speaking, and I was only a teenager at the time, I found these commercials appalling.  Looking back, I see them as a typical example of Soho adwankers taking a much-loved regional product and turning it into something to brayingly laugh about over cocktails in a poncy central London bar.  Parodies of contemporary ads may have made their fellow "creatives" applaud at the next workshop, but for those who can't grasp the intent, it's alienating and patronising.  I, and many other Northwesterners, would have gladly responded to such "affectionate ribbing" by demolishing the brewery at Strangeways ourselves.

It took another 14 years, but the charming fellows at AB-Inbev did it for us.  Boddies time in the sun was short, and the brand slowly tanked after it fell out the fashion these ads expensively promoted.  The can and keg stuff is still made at an enormous beer factory (I hesitate to call it a "brewery", myself) near the M6, but cask Boddingtons is long gone.

I have not seen it on either a font or handpump for nigh on a decade.  Surely somebody knows where the Boddies is buried?

Old Beer Ads #2 - Greenall Whitley (1984-85?)

If you're from the North and a certain age, you will remember Greenall Whitley.  A regional brewer based in Warrington, they pumped out oceans of bog-standard brown filth for decades.  Strangers coming to our part of the world back then would arrive at one of their pubs, shout "Not bloody Greenalls!  Anything but that!" and hastily leave for somewhere where the beer tasted of something.

It's presumed the ad agency tasted the beer, as they say nothing about it's qualities.  Merely saying that having fought the law and the law winning, being back home in Lancashire is better than breaking rocks in the hot sun.  Even the pump-action shotgun wielding guard is moved to tears by the mention of Greenalls.  Maybe he tasted their beer too.

Whatever our hammer-wielding friend thinks of Greenall Whitley Land, it's assured that the company itself thought a lot less of it.  In the following few years after this ad's run, they bought numerous breweries around the North.  Then shut them all.  This must have been a good idea, as they even shut their own in Warrington in 1991, thus depriving future drinkers like me the uncertain privilege of drinking their Best Bitter.  After that, Greenall Whitley Ltd. slowly divested itself of it's assets over the next decade, eventually consisting of little more than some hotels and a few bottles of gin.  Never mind, I'm sure it all made money for someone.

Sadly, Mr. Curly Rockbreaker may have got back someday to the place he knows so well, but he would have been unlikely to have found anything he knew still remaining.

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