The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
This film is part of Free
Kitchen Kaper
The clinking of the milkman doing his daily rounds turns into a moving tale of romance between the contrasting beverages of day and night.
From the collection of:
Overview
This whimsical animation by Wakefield couple Doug and Norah Brear wonderfully shows off the inventiveness of many amateur filmmakers in the 1960s. It was the days when milk was delivered to everyone’s front door, as well as given to all school children, and beer was considered to be “good for you”; and so, what could be more healthy than the marriage of the two?
Doug and Norah Brear made over 60 films between 1960 and 1985. The 1970s saw the start of the decline of milk floats and home deliveries, having to compete with supermarkets selling cheap milk in cartons, and furthered by the deregulation of the British milk industry in 1994. In the 1950s and 60s the Milk Marketing Board had a spate of advertising slogans, including "milk's gotta lotta bottle", written by the jingle king Rod Allen, and "drinka pinta milka day", seen here, memorably mimicked by Tony Hancock. The beer slogan is a variation on ‘Guinness is Good for You’, although the reference is undoubtedly to the famous Mackeson milk stout, who had a cartoon of a beer barrel and a milk urn snuggling up together.