On Radio Luxembourg of the time, the evening was divided into 15-minute programmes, each one associated with a sponsor and, generally, a single record label. The Wrigley’s programme was fifteen minutes of Pye records, and this jingle was used during the show.

On Big L, shows were unsponsored and a mix of discs from various labels was played, with spot advertising in-between. This Radio Luxembourg jingle became a 30 second spot advert on Radio London.

Incidentally, Teddy Johnson’s other claim to fame was that he had a popular programme on Radio Luxembourg, and was even resident in the Grand Duchy in the early 1950s.

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Matt Monro sang…

“Zal is freshness with a zing!
Everyday, yes, Zal’s the thing!
For the springy, zingy smell of pine!
Zal disinfectant every time!

Zal kills germs, kicks them out!
Zal leaves the zing of pine about!
You’ll notice the difference with everything!
Zal is freshness with a zing!”

Children of the sixties – or ‘babyboomers’ as sociologists are wont to call us – carry with them an unusual legacy to accompany their memories of black and white television, President Kennedy and the Beatles. As independent television spread through the regions in the late fifties and early sixties, children were brought face-to-face with the power of the advertising jingle.

Imported from American commercial radio of the forties, these were ITV’s secret weapon in its first decade of advertising. The only screen commercials with which the British public was familiar – in the cinema – had been the hard sell with relatively little use of jingles. By the time Lew Grade, Sidney Bernstein and Howard Thomas were in full swing, jingles were hitting the ear from every angle.

As a baby boomer now in his sixties, I remain haunted – nay, assailed – by the jingles of my youth, which play in my head without invitation on an almost daily basis (“One, two, three, four, reasons why Julie Andrews likes Ryvita!”). Whether the original advertising agencies intended these children to be humming the tunes fifty years later is not on record.

But, as many of the products concerned are no longer available, one suspects that their efforts peaked too late. (“In days of old, fruits were sold that had to be washed by hand, but now they are sold ready washed by Whitworths. Whitworths are a girl’s best friend!”). In the advertising world of today, jingles themselves are passé. Some have survived (“A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play!”) whilst others have been hurriedly modified to suit the advertising standards authorities (“Malteasers, the chocolate with the less fattening centre!” becoming a more truthful though less fun “Malteasers, the chocolate with the crisp, lighter centre!”).

The jingles of the sixties were, of course, the nursery rhymes of the electrical age. Sung in the playground, hummed in the classroom, even used in freeform essay punishments, they were the very essence of capitalism, worming their way permanently into your brain. A peculiar feature of 50s advertising, which credited viewers with being gormless, required the product name to be endlessly repeated (“Remember the name, Persil!”). This habit so infected speech patterns that even today, on stating a brand name, one can be tempted to repeat it endlessly.

A particular feature of 50s and 60s copywriting was twisting the wording to make it rhyme (“Eveninks and morninks I drink Warninks! Warninks Advocaat!”). Or the even more absurd tendency – to state the utterly meaningless with sublime conviction (“Eden Vale yogurt is the young idea!”). The implication of the deranged state of a shopper’s mind was never far from the surface. The suggestion that housewives – for it was always housewives – thought of nothing but product was strong. (“Always ask for Newfarm, Newfarm eggs, fresh from the farm for you!”). While the equally offensive suggestion – that husbands were always on hand to sort things out – was also a constant refrain. Some jingles have entered the folklore of the nation. “Don’t forget the Fruit Gums, Mum!” and “Beanz meanz Heinz!” always there to remind us of the power of marketing.

But it is the poetry of the obscure that stays with me (“Look into the jar, it’s a deep rich brown, ’cause there’s coffee pot freshness all the way down!”). These rhymes were the mantras of a secular age. Questions, statements of loyalty, a form of hypnosis (“All the family loves Carnation, ’cause it’s creamy rich!”).

Whether to laugh or cry is never entirely clear. I am both the prisoner of these nightmares and reminded of the comfort of a sixties childhood while in their soothing embrace. Even my gravestone may one day bear the footnote “Ricicles are twicicles as nicicles!”.

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Two Lotteries Acts – 1934 and 1956 – had made national lottery games illegal in the UK. Small, local lotteries could be run, but under very tight rules. Successive governments disapproved of gambling, permitting it only on-course and in members clubs. The only notable exception was football.

The football pools were – and are, they still exist, although they’re no somewhat overshadowed by other forms of gambling – were felt to be harmless. The stakes were small and the payouts were generally small too – the huge wins were rare enough to be national news. The system of pools agents, collecting the coupons and dispersing the prizes, was seen as a good thing, keeping a national game local. And if the the pools didn’t exist, then there was a big possibility that the people would start betting between themselves, or with local back-street bookies, and that would be A Bad Thing.

The pools also required skill, which wasn’t necessary in straight betting on the results of a match, with the person playing using previous form to work out the likely wins, draws and losses each week. This was much more like on-course horserace betting, which suited the great and the good better than the thought of someone betting next week’s rent on a single game.

Horace Batchelor’s Infra Draw method, however, didn’t use form or or any other method of predicting outcomes. Instead, it was more like modern spread betting. People who joined would send their coupon and stake to him, and he’d fill in the coupons. His method rarely won huge payouts, but was pretty well guaranteed to result in a constant stream of small payouts – certainly enough to pay for next week’s entry.

His main outlet for advertising was Radio Luxembourg, and he recorded the advertisements himself, in the (correct) belief that presenting himself as an ordinary guy who had just happened to developed a method he wanted to share with other ordinary guys would be a good sell.

His operation was based in Keynsham, a town halfway between Bristol and Bath that nobody except its residents had heard of. It’s one of those British towns designed to confuse foreigners – the spelling and the pronunciation only having a tangential relationship with each other – joining such mouthbenders as Kirkcudbright, Leominster, Alnwick, Bicester and the kings of these towns, Shrewsbury.

Add that to Radio Luxembourg’s famous fade and the vagaries of medium wave transmission, and you’ve got to spell the town’s name out to ensure your post gets to you. With the adverts in constant rotation on Luxembourg, the line “Keynsham – K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M – Keynsham” became famous, and people still know the joke of saying it, even though most will have no idea at all what the joke is about.

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It doesn’t look subtle to modern eyes, but there are a couple of subtle tugs built into this advert.

For a start, the housewife doesn’t look frazzled, as she would on television until introduced to the product. Instead she’s in mod clothes, with her freshly set mod hair, looking relaxed and happy as she does her chores.

The addition of the skipping girl attaches to the ‘that means germ-free!’ tag line, reminding the reader that it doesn’t do just to have everything looking clean: it must be sterilised if you have children in order to protect them.

The text subtly reminds us to buy two bottles one for the lav and one for the kitchen. Why can’t one bottle be used in both places? Well, it suits Lever Brothers better if you buy two, obviously. But also, it subtly implies, the germs are different in the kitchen and the bathroom. Don’t let the two mix. You need two bottles.

The final tug is the last image, the housewife with her bottle of Domestos, looking for all the world like she’s going to drink it. This product has a nice smell, it hints, even though it doesn’t. You’ll enjoy using it, it presents, even though you won’t. And it’s safe around children, it shows, even though it isn’t. All very subtle.

Meanwhile, a bottle is only one shilling and threepence, is glass, and you’ll get twopence back if you return the bottle to the grocer you bought if from. Since lorries arrive full from the depot at a modern supermarket and leave to return empty, one would think that this old system to reduce waste would be easier now than it was in 1964. Apparently not.

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“As free as this. People who go their own way get National. The choice of one motorist in every seven. So go all the way. Go your own way. Get National.”

The post National petrol appeared first on THIS IS ZENITH 1964 from Transdiffusion.

When Sir Alec Douglas Home became prime minster, he made a self-depreciating joke that he worked out the nation’s finances using matchsticks. His reputation never really recovered.

Labour, under its new, dynamic, ‘young’ leader Harold Wilson, made a big play on how the PM was out of touch. Labour, he said, wouldn’t use matchsticks: we’ll ask a scientist to use a computer for such things. The white heat of technology would sort out Britain’s problems.

The public really warmed to this idea. Technology, automation, computers – they were things of the future and they were happening now. Scientists, the guys (for it was always guys) behind these innovations, knew more and knew how to find out more stuff. Advertisers leapt on this concept.

Washing powder adverts ceased to show a man in a suit explaining the benefits of the new Whizzo brand to a frazzled housewife. Instead, the actor donned a white coat and explained that the benefits of the new Whizzo were due to science. All manner of other products donned this scientific mantle, with everything from bread (our bread is lighter due to science!) to central heating (our boilers are more efficient due to science!) getting a man in a white coat to explain how wonderfully scientific each product was.

Here, featuring the frazzled housewife, the man in a white coat and a series of scientific-looking diagrams, Gibbs uses science to explain why you should switch to their scientifically proven scientific toothpaste with the scientific addition of science-based fluoride.

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A little public information film, run during advertisement breaks on ATV Midlands and Granada in the mid-60s, reminding people to Keep Britain Tidy.

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Memory fails us: we don’t remember what the new mystery flavour turned out to be. Do you?

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Despite the official disapproval of Radio Luxembourg, government quangos had no problem placing adverts with the Grand Duchy’s international radio station. Here the Milk Marketing Board urges us to never bicker with a vicar but drinka pinta quencha thirst.

The post Drinka pinta milka day appeared first on THIS IS ZENITH 1964 from Transdiffusion.

Automatic washing machines are a new thing. Most people have a twin tub – a top-loading washing machine paired with a spin drier, which you wheeled out of storage, connected to the tap and put a bucked under the outflow to collect the dirty water. Many others were still using the technology of the Victorian era, boiling water on the stove and washing the clothes in a large bucket or tin bath, then putting them through a mangle to get the excess water out.

Therefore, rather than boasting about what Hotpoint automatic washers can do versus other brands, this advert has to tell the housewife why she should move away from the twin tub or the mangle in the first place. And explain the concept of an automatic washing machine as well.

Note that they show the top-loading automatic in a fitted kitchen, but the text refers to it being on rollers – most people do not have fitted kitchens and buyers of automatic washing machines are still unlikely to have them plumbed in – they will still be wheeled out, attached to the tap, and wheeled back out of the way when the washing is done.

The post New Hotpoint automatic appeared first on THIS IS ZENITH 1964 from Transdiffusion.

From the mid-1960s, your Saturday Night Suit is by John Collier, says Radio Luxembourg.

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What’s most notable about this advert is that it catches British Railways halfway on its journey to becoming British Rail in 1965. The trading name of the organisation is still British Railways and hasn’t been truncated yet, and the double-headed arrow hasn’t been introduced. But the Rail Alphabet typeface has arrived. It was first tested at Liverpool Street in London, and the process for changing all signage began in 1965.

However, British Rail decided that signs would only be replaced as and when they had life expired – fallen off, become illegible or as part of a bigger upgrade. The last of the British Railways ‘totem’ station signs were not replaced until the 1980s.

The post Enjoy a British Railways mini-holiday appeared first on THIS IS ZENITH 1964 from Transdiffusion.

A fantastic earworm for Fairy Snow from the 1960s with Craig Douglas and the Mike Sammes Singers. Unusual for having Craig Douglas narrating and breaking out into song.

The post It gets white to the heart of the wash! appeared first on THIS IS ZENITH 1964 from Transdiffusion.