{"id":679804,"date":"2026-07-08T05:20:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T05:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/679804\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T05:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T05:20:14","slug":"baldy-man-gold-blend-flirters-and-mash-mad-martians-tvs-golden-age-ads-art-and-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/679804\/","title":{"rendered":"Baldy Man, Gold Blend flirters and mash-mad Martians: TV\u2019s golden age ads | Art and design"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hanging over the toilet in the gents\u2019 loos at the History of Advertising<\/a> Trust\u2019s archive in deepest Norfolk is a photograph of Ian Botham. It\u2019s not just the cricketing great\u2019s mullet that tells you this is 1986, but the fact that Beefy is smoking a cigar. The caption below answers the question that has troubled philosophers since Aristotle: \u201cHappiness is a cigar called Hamlet.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the past is a foreign country, then the history of advertising is a whole alternate universe, one in which excitable metallic martians induced us to buy Cadbury\u2019s powdered potatoes with the slogan: \u201cFor mash get Smash.\u201d It\u2019s a place where bowler-hatted chimps dressed as removal men wooed us into buying PG Tips tea, while legions of sports stars energetically advertised carcinogenic smokes.<\/p>\n

For gen Z-ers and younger, many of the 10m items in HAT\u2019s collection, not to mention the 50,000 commercials on its website, will be beyond weird, but for boomers like me, they trigger non-stop Proustian rushes. Look! There\u2019s Nicole and Papa in 1991, pastiching soupy French films like Jean de Florette to sell us Renault Clios. There\u2019s the Gold Blend couple, AKA the late Anthony Head and Sharon Maughan, whose romance blossomed over Nescaf\u00e9 instant coffee \u2013 and whose climactic kiss was seen by 30m viewers in 1993. There\u2019s the little lad in a flat cap pushing his Hovis-laden bike over cobbles to the sound of Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s New World Symphony in the 1973 ad by Ridley Scott.<\/p>\n

double quotation markA 1940s advert for Craven A cigarettes claims they prevent sore throats<\/p>\n

All these gems are held online and in former barns leased to HAT by Sir Nicholas Hickman Ponsonby Bacon. If TS Eliot\u2019s Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons, many of us can measure ours in ads. For instance, bow-tied and top-hatted Frank Muir leaning on his Rolls-Royce convertible endorsing a certain Cadbury\u2019s chocolate in a 1977 TV ad while singing the following ditty: \u201cEveryone\u2019s a fruit and nut case \/ I find it very healthy for my ego \/ It makes one feel more vital \/ As if one had a title \/ Lots more fun than plumbing \/ Or a saxophone recital.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tick followed tock \u2026 1999\u2019s Guinness surfers. Photograph: Courtesy: History of Advertising Trust<\/p>\n

Then there was that all-too-relatable moment in 1986 when Gregor Fisher\u2019s Baldy Man went into a photobooth and arranged his comb-over for a passport snap. But then something went wrong \u2013 the seat collapsed repeatedly, his locks got messed up and Gregor sank beneath the frame. A few seconds later, Bach\u2019s Air on a G String struck up and a plume of smoke rose. It may not have been possible to claim at that time that smoking was good for your health, but the implicit suggestion was that it provided solace on a very bad hair day.<\/p>\n

Advertising provokes passionate, if ultimately irrational, allegiances. Consider the current war between price comparison websites go.compare.com<\/a> and comparethemarket.com<\/a>, fought out on TV between a tribe of meerkats with Russian accents and a large tenor with a ridiculous moustache. \u201cI can\u2019t stand that man!\u201d says John Gordon-Saker, HAT\u2019s executive director over coffee during my visit, about the opera singer. \u201cIf I was ever going to do anything, I would go to the meerkat rather than Go Compare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daft? Perhaps, but businesses rise and fall on such emotive affiliations. And Gordon-Saker is a man of improbable passions, still drinking PG Tips out of loyalty to the removal van chimps, even though it is self-evident that chimps don\u2019t improve the flavour of your tea. He\u2019s proof that we aren\u2019t all rational utility maximisers whose purchases reflect sober judgments. Rather, we are passionate, biddable creatures, swayed to buy stuff we don\u2019t really need by cunningly deployed cuddly animals and couples flirting over reconstituted coffee granules.<\/p>\n

Treasure trove \u2026 Alistair Moir and the HAT archive. Photograph: Joshua Bright\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

You may think that an archive devoted to advertising is frivolous nonsense but you would be wrong. Ever since Walter Benjamin started collecting advertising posters from 19th-century Paris for his masterwork The Arcades Project, such ephemera have been key to any understanding of modernity and how willingly people will buy often eminently body- and soul-destroying stuff.<\/p>\n

In that sense, the archive I\u2019ve been offered a rare chance to explore as HAT celebrates its 50th birthday is a bigger version of Benjamin\u2019s Arcades. Deputy director Alistair Moir talks me through some highlights. On a table in one room, he has arranged some ads to reflect changing attitudes to smoking. A 1940s ad for Craven A cigarettes depicts a glamorous woman in a pearl necklace holding a smoke aloft. The blurb reads: \u201cCraven A \u2013 for your throat\u2019s sake. Made specifically to prevent sore throats.\u201d I only have one word for Moir: How? \u201cI don\u2019t know. But in the 1930s and 40s, you can say pretty much what you like.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, in 1962, the Royal College of Physicians published its Smoking and Health report, authoritatively linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer, bronchitis, and heart disease. \u201cTwo years later, they banned cigarette advertising on TV. The Advertising Standards Authority then says you can\u2019t imply that cigarette smoking is healthy. And that changes advertising.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, instead of showing happy healthy people smoking, or indeed showing cigarettes at all, ads used the power of suggestion to associate smoking with the good life. In one magazine ad, tickets to the 1976 Montreal Olympics and other jet-setting lifestyle items are sumptuously photographed alongside a golden box of Benson & Hedges.<\/p>\n

A load of old cobbles \u2026 Ridley Scott\u2019s Hovis lad. Photograph: Courtesy: History of Advertising Trust<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s interesting,\u201d says Moir, \u201cis you can see how regulations affected creativity.\u201d Some ads became surreal, he says, such as a Benson & Hedges box lying next to a mousehole, as if it were a mousetrap, or the image of a slash through a piece of purple material to advertise Silk Cut. \u201cThese ads treated the consumer with a bit more intelligence. You have to work at understanding what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if this might suggest that human creativity and evil sometimes march in lockstep, Moir shows me another ad campaign from HAT\u2019s collection. During the second world war, copywriters invented a character called the Squanderbug. \u201cHe would sit on your shoulder and try to get you to waste your money,\u201d says Moir. \u201cThe idea was to beat the Squanderbug and invest your money in National Savings to help win the war.\u201d As the Squanderbug evolved, he was given a Hitlerite comb-over and, in his final iteration, a body tattooed with swastikas. Moral? Copywriting can sometimes be used for public good.<\/p>\n

The HAT archive was actually founded to refute the idea that ad-makers were producers of diabolical ephemera. There\u2019s a strong element of social history, too. Its oldest artefact is a 1680 ad from the London Gazette, inviting readers to subscribe to an atlas of northern Europe. Another, which appeared in the long-defunct Observator in 1684, is selling fire insurance. Effectively, the ad says if your house is on fire, we won\u2019t put it out unless you\u2019ve coughed up your premium. \u201cIt\u2019s like a protection racket,\u201d says Moir.<\/p>\n

You could say pretty much what you liked\u2019 \u2026. the Craven A advert. Photograph: Joshua Bright\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

HAT\u2019s existence is important not just as a social history resource but for the ad industry itself, enabling today\u2019s copywriters to learn from the past. Moir shows me the evolution of ads for Heinz baked beans, whose logo today remains the same as it was in the 1920s. He passes over that moment when the slogan \u201cBeanz Meanz Heinz\u201d trampled over British orthography. But the extent to which brands can endure is made clear by the fact that Ed Sheeran has a Heinz tomato ketchup tattoo. To commemorate this, Moir shows me what looks like a miniature guitar amplifier, which turns out to be a flip-open box containing a special edition bottle of ketchup to celebrate Sheeran\u2019s fetish.<\/p>\n

Advertising today is facing an existential crisis. Algorithms have destroyed the charm, such as it was, of the craft. \u201cAdvertising today has lost a bit of that kind of emotional storytelling,\u201d says Moir. \u201cIt\u2019s become a bit more formulaic and data-driven. Brands and agencies are often obsessed by return on investment rather than doing big campaigns that really draw people into a story and connect with emotion.\u201d The fear is that advertising won\u2019t be as creative or as enjoyable \u2013 just much more diabolically effective at making us buy things.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s Moir\u2019s favourite ad? A 2008 riff on Ridley Scott\u2019s iconic Hovis commercial. Picture the scene. It\u2019s 1886 and a baker has just handed a little lad a loaf. He then runs through decade upon decade of British history, from marching suffragettes to saluting soldiers, from the rubble of war to the swinging 60s, from the miners\u2019 strike to the fireworks of the new millennium. \u201cWe get all these snapshots of British life,\u201d says Moir. \u201cIt was a fantastic campaign for Hovis, reinvigorating the brand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Incidentally, the name Hovis came about in 1890 as the makers of Smith\u2019s Patent Process Germ Flour very sensibly sought a new name for their bread. A student called Herbert Grime won a competition with his suggestion of Hovis: a conflation of hominis vis, a Latin term meaning \u201cstrength of man\u201d. It\u2019s hard to imagine Hovis would have endured with that brand name. \u201cWhen he passed away,\u201d says Moir, \u201cthey actually paid his widow a pension \u2013 even though he\u2019d never actually worked for the company.\u201d<\/p>\n

See more at hatads.org.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hanging over the toilet in the gents\u2019 loos at the History of Advertising Trust\u2019s archive in deepest Norfolk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-679804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}