Golden Blue
November 28, 2017 12:09 PM Subscribe
Back in 1973 a certain Ridley Scott directed a famous advert for Hovis... the star of that ad returned to the original location - Gold Hill in Dorset - for another advert this year, this time for a different product.
Two nuns were riding their bikes down a cobblestone street. One nun says to the other, "I've never come this way before." The other nun replies, "It's the cobbles."
posted by cjorgensen at 12:45 PM on November 28, 2017 [17 favorites]
posted by cjorgensen at 12:45 PM on November 28, 2017 [17 favorites]
Filed under "ads that make me inexplicably tear up," thanks!
posted by mykescipark at 1:41 PM on November 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by mykescipark at 1:41 PM on November 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Could an English person explain why the ad is famous? I'm not seeing anything amazing about it, but maybe if I'd first seen it 40-some years ago it would warm my heart now.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:45 PM on November 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:45 PM on November 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Could an English person explain why the ad is famous? I'm not seeing anything amazing about it, but maybe if I'd first seen it 40-some years ago it would warm my heart now.
It probably played 8 jillion times during the World Cup or something. Kinda how every chat room with young people it is just a collection of people typing "Dilly Dilly" because of the stupid recent Bud Light campaign during the NFL games and the MLB playoffs.
Anyway, how is that considered a steep commute? Here's a hill less than mile way from me in Silver Lake. Largest grade is 32%. Also great for laughing at struck trucks/cars that blindly followed Waze and got stuck.
posted by sideshow at 3:21 PM on November 28, 2017
It probably played 8 jillion times during the World Cup or something. Kinda how every chat room with young people it is just a collection of people typing "Dilly Dilly" because of the stupid recent Bud Light campaign during the NFL games and the MLB playoffs.
Anyway, how is that considered a steep commute? Here's a hill less than mile way from me in Silver Lake. Largest grade is 32%. Also great for laughing at struck trucks/cars that blindly followed Waze and got stuck.
posted by sideshow at 3:21 PM on November 28, 2017
eponysterical.
posted by jenkinsEar at 3:25 PM on November 28, 2017
posted by jenkinsEar at 3:25 PM on November 28, 2017
If that original Hovis ad was made in 1973 then it was playing for at least 15 years because that's before I was born, yet I saw it constantly whilst growing up and internalised it utterly. Its got to be one of the top three iconic adverts for a couple of generations, along with the 1980s skeletal Scotch ad.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 3:48 PM on November 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 3:48 PM on November 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Good lord, the British are so... British. I don't think there's anyone more British.
My mum has an expression, 'as homely as a Hovis loaf' and that ad pretty much sums it up. Come to think of it, she would tell us this was something a university boyfriend had said about her, and I assume meant and taken endearingly, which sums up the power over Britain of whatever Hovis is tapping into here.
I don't think I've ever actually seen this one, but Hovis made plenty like it over the next decade - same music, same old timey Yorkshire village washed in a dusty nostalgic haze.
posted by Flashman at 4:06 PM on November 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
My mum has an expression, 'as homely as a Hovis loaf' and that ad pretty much sums it up. Come to think of it, she would tell us this was something a university boyfriend had said about her, and I assume meant and taken endearingly, which sums up the power over Britain of whatever Hovis is tapping into here.
I don't think I've ever actually seen this one, but Hovis made plenty like it over the next decade - same music, same old timey Yorkshire village washed in a dusty nostalgic haze.
posted by Flashman at 4:06 PM on November 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
Yep, at a ruling grade of only 28.8%, Gold Hill's definitely not a steep commute. I've no idea why that 13 year old boy on the end of his bread round was struggling.
Thankfully, now he's 57, he's got an electric bike. My trip into town doesn't get about 14% (and averages 8%), and yet I got an electric bike, too.
posted by ambrosen at 4:13 PM on November 28, 2017
Thankfully, now he's 57, he's got an electric bike. My trip into town doesn't get about 14% (and averages 8%), and yet I got an electric bike, too.
posted by ambrosen at 4:13 PM on November 28, 2017
It's the British equivalent of the "Wednesday Is Prince Spaghetti Day" commercial that ran for years and years .
posted by briank at 4:27 PM on November 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by briank at 4:27 PM on November 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
"It was pure fate that I got the part as the Hovis boy. I was down to the last three, and it turned out that one of the two boys couldn't ride a bike, and the other wouldn't cut his hair into the pudding bowl style - it was the Seventies after all. As the only boy who could ride a bike and would cut his hair, I got the part."
posted by unliteral at 4:57 PM on November 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by unliteral at 4:57 PM on November 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
Isn't that where hooligans knocked over a dustbin?
posted by sonascope at 5:40 PM on November 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by sonascope at 5:40 PM on November 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Success is 90% showing up for a bowl cut.
posted by notyou at 7:05 PM on November 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by notyou at 7:05 PM on November 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
To learn more about the history of bread in the UK, be sure to check out BBC Timeshift series 9, episode 8 entitled Bread: A Loaf Affair, hosted by Tom Baker. I don't see it on the tubes but uh, it's out there if you know where to look, kno'm'sain'.
posted by glonous keming at 7:37 PM on November 28, 2017
posted by glonous keming at 7:37 PM on November 28, 2017
The original ad's combination of brass band music and that homely Yorkshire accent has the power to trigger sentimental nostalgia in most English people of my generation, I'd say.
Much like George Orwell's visions of old maids cycling to church in the morning mist, it evokes an idea of England rather than anything that ever existed, but that doesn't diminish its power. If anything, the effect is even stronger now, as it also triggers memories of watching the ad so many times in our own (hopefully happy) childhoods.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:54 AM on November 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
Much like George Orwell's visions of old maids cycling to church in the morning mist, it evokes an idea of England rather than anything that ever existed, but that doesn't diminish its power. If anything, the effect is even stronger now, as it also triggers memories of watching the ad so many times in our own (hopefully happy) childhoods.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:54 AM on November 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
They should have been in Pittsburgh last weekend for the Dirty Dozen Bike Race of 13 of the steepest hills in the city ending with Canton Ave (slyt), the steepest street in the US (and maybe the world).
posted by octothorpe at 5:02 AM on November 29, 2017
posted by octothorpe at 5:02 AM on November 29, 2017
Oh and someone actually did the climb using a city bike share rental bike.
posted by octothorpe at 5:04 AM on November 29, 2017
posted by octothorpe at 5:04 AM on November 29, 2017
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than the British...
posted by Naberius at 12:41 PM on November 28, 2017 [3 favorites]