The award winning ‘Cream of Manchester’ Boddingtons adverts appeared on telly and in print from around 1992 to 1999, devised by the Bartle Bogle Hegarty creative agency and bringing a whole new glam to back street pints of our local Strangeways brew. Here’s a selection of the best…
The original Boddies girl was Debby Carr, who starred in the sexy, sultry ad using the brew’s head as face cream… ‘Soft, smooth…luxurious, sensational, pure cream...’…The bloke, played by Milk Tray man, James Coombes, takes in the aroma and goshes out the immortal line…
‘By eck you smell gorgeous tonight petal!’
Debby, from South Manchester, still uses @byeckpetal as her Instagram account, and told the Jewish Chronicle that “Men still come up to me saying: ‘Aren’t you the Boddington’s girl‘, or ‘I had your poster on my wall’. I think: ‘Eeww, I don’t want to know’…”
In 1993, Anna Chancellor took the brand to even greater heights in the Cornetto parody ad as Gladys Althorpe, drifting down a Manchester canal on a gondola, before nicking some bloke’s pint going the other way…
‘By ‘eck it’s gorgeous’ she goes in a broad accent, while he turns to the camera and sniffs ‘That Gladys Althorpe, she never buys her own’…
Anna, from Somerset, went on to star in Four Weddings and a Funeral, plus loads of films and tv series, including Tipping The Velvet, Spooks and The Hour...“I wouldn’t say I made Anna’s career, but she did go on to star in Four Weddings and a Funeral the following year” advert director, Geoff Stark, told the Guardian in 2019 “More importantly, she married my B camera operator Nigel Willoughby, who she met on set when he wasn’t shooting close-ups with a massive telephoto lens. So at least someone found romance.”
In 1994, Sarah Parish, also from Somerset, became the third Boddies girl, starring in an ad which came on like it was set on some far off exotic beach – that turned out to be Blackpool. As the chorus ‘Won’t you stay just a little bit longer’ wafted in the background, Sarah, sporting a huge hat and a pint of the bitter, turns to a well oiled bloke and goes…
‘By eck, you can stay as long as you like chuck…and give us another rub down with that chip fat…’
“It was set on an apparently very glamorous beach, with me in a bikini and a big hat; then the camera pulled back, and you saw it was actually Blackpool and my name was Vera and I had a thick Manchester accent” she recalls “To me, it was just another embarrassing stunt…But it led to a lot of roles as northern women: people didn’t seem to realise I was actually from Somerset. It was one of the first television things I did and I got a lot of TV offers after doing it…It was my first big break and I owe an awful lot to those adverts” says Sarah, who went on to star in many tv series and films, including Monroe, Bancroft, Broadchurch and the Doctor Who episode, The Runaway Bride.
In 1997, Melanie Sykes, from Mossley, took over…“When the first ad came out it was so different to any other advert that you saw on telly; the shock element at the end” she recalled “I remember thinking what great ads they were…It was a very sophisticated way of showing a northern drink and it worked. I was modelling when I was first asked to be in the Boddingtons advert…I got the fax of the script for the ad and I read it and I just thought ‘This is so perfect for me’. It was a spoof on the Calvin Klein commercial, it was shot in Malabu in a huge house and basically I had half naked men walking round all day and gorgeous models, and me in a white flowing dress, and it was like a dream come true. I had a marvellous time…And I knew something would happen to me once that advert was on because they’d been so high profile in the past…”
‘Hey Tarquin, are your trollies on the right way round?’
The next Boddingtons advert that Melanie starred in was a spoof of commercials for trainers, which saw an athlete, played by Ken George, pounding through the desert and coming across an ice cream van with a pint served up and eagerly gulped…
‘Do you want a flake in that luv?’…
In 2017 Melanie reincarnated the role for a new Boddies advert and said: “It is just over twenty years since I appeared in the first ad and it was a truly life changing time. It marked the end of a successful modelling career and introduced me into the world of TV presenting. I am very proud of the adverts and I know they hold a lot of nostalgia not just for me but for many people…”
There were other adverts too. In 2004, Alison King, who later went on to star in Coronation Street, became the face of Boddies but it was no longer ‘The Cream of Manchester’, just the ‘Perfect cream, now available at home’…and the catchphrase, as a group of heist blokes charge in the door with a half pint…
‘You’ve got to think bigger than that love’…
There are indeed whole essays on the sexual connotations of the Boddingtons adverts – click here for the subliminal messages
See also:
