John Smith’s has sired innumerable outstanding ads, beginning at John Webster’s BMP.
But, in the 2000s, it landed at TBWA and happened across Bolton’s Peter Kay (not a Tadcaster lad but definitely northern and the most gifted comedian of his generation) casting him in a series of ‘no-nonsense’ ads.
No-nonsense, blunt-speaking northerners can be an acquired taste but Kay carried it off triumphantly. Here are three of his finest.
Why can’t we write them like this any more? Is it because comedians, now known as stand-ups, are required to be ‘edgy’ and deemed unsuitable for family viewing?
The writer, on some of these anyway (not sure) was the late, great Paul Silburn.
