Beer is best – A motto for life.

Vince — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:57:38 +0000

About seven and a half years ago, when we first moved into our current house, I was rooting around in the loft when I found some newspapers that had been used as a temporary material for lagging pipes and filling holes.

I could tell they were old from the colour of them so I opened them as carefully as I could to see what they were. A lot of them were very brittle and disintegrated as I handled them. Some of them, however, I managed to save and I’m going to share the most interesting (to me anyway) with you.

The first excerpt, and my favourite one, is shown here. ‘beer is best’.
I’m not sure what paper it was from but the date is 15th March 1935 and is likely to be from a UK national paper of the time. There is no specific brand of beer mentioned so it must have been commissioned by a body representing the industry as a whole.

For an A1 people, beer is best

The text is as follows;

When our forefathers drank beer with their beef, they were relying on their sense of the fitness of things – and nobly it served them! What they did by instinct when our nation was in the making, we have every reason for copying to-day. We know why beer is best. We know that the barley-malt from which it is brewed is Nature’s own energizer. Let every one of us profit by that knowledge in the campaign to improve the whole nation’s physique.

I love the sheer ignorance of the fact that it would indeed have a massive effect on the nation’s physique if we all drank beer more, but not in the way they are indicating. Aside from the constant drunkenness of course!
Has the character in the advert been turfed off his ship due to drunkenness after too much ‘beer’ I wonder? Set adrift on the open sea to fend for himself with his, rather lazy, drinking buddy just peeping between his legs who is looking a bit sick.

One day I’ll get around to setting this clipping in a frame to hang up in our house. God forbid anyone who might frown upon me having that 8th can of Guinness. They will swiftly have this thrust into their face and then they will feel sorry they ever questioned my desire to see this country great again.
Yes, great like when our forefathers were building this country and empire, completely legless and in a permanent drunken stupor.

Another couple to follow, if you’re interested…

Vince

Content is King... » newspaper

Beer is best – A motto for life.