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  The adverts were pulled in 1991 and marketing support for Stones was withdrawn throughout the decade and the brewery in Sheffield was shut in 1999.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 #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.