Chocs away

As chocaholics and Backtrack column readers will know, Cadbury Heath is not some milk-traded wildlife sanctuary in Birmingham, but a semi-detached suburb of Bristol.

Birmingham, of course, was always regarded as Cadbury country – Bournville, Dairy Milk, bar none.

Bristol was Fry’s fiefdom, Five Boys said to have been the most popular chocolate in the world, and no matter that the two companies had merged in 1919.

Quintessential, Five Boys lasted from 1902 to 1976, the posters familiar on railway stations and advertising hoardings throughout the land.

The model was Lindsay Poulton, himself just five at the time, the photographers his father and uncle.

The first pose was the trickiest, so difficult to achieve the desired degree of tearfulness that they tied a bag of photographers’ ammonia round the poor kid’s neck. It was enough to make him weep.

Fry’s – “Makers to the king” – paid £200 for exclusive use of the image rights, a huge sum in those days.

Each face had a single-word caption, all ending in “ation”. Boys will be boys, we’ve removed the captions from the reproduction.

Readers are invited to recall what they were. Chocs away, the answers at the foot of the column.

MANY other confectionery ads will stir sweet nothings among older readers, though the younger generation may feel caught by the Curly-Wurlies.

Who could ignore the winsome child begging his mum not to forget the fruit gums, or the insistence that a Mars a day helped you work, rest and play?

More recently, the Milky Bar kids shot up the ratings, none better remembered than Gareth Watchman from Bradbury, near Sedgefield, six years old when he recorded the commercials in 1994. These days, it’s said, he can’t even stand the smell of a Milky Bar.

Those a bit longer in the sweet tooth are invited to identify the products associated with the following slogans:

􀁧 A hazelnut in every bite
􀁧 Melts in your mouth, not on your hands
􀁧 Buy some for Lulu.
􀁧 Just enough to give the kids a treat.
􀁧 Tastes like chocolate never tasted before
􀁧 Too good to hurry
􀁧 See the face you love light up
􀁧 Made to make your mouth water
􀁧 Not for girls
􀁧 One chunk leads to another

No big prizes, no point in biting off more than you can chew, but a couple of quarters of something or other for the first correct entry out of the hat next Monday.

PRE to a good home, we have been campaigning about the now-promiscuous use of that pesky three-letter word – as in preordering.

An advertisement in The Oldie magazine offers a hitherto unrecorded example.

The London Mint Office is promoting coins “struck to honour our wounded service personnel” and with a percentage of income from them going to Help for Heroes.

Fifty thousand are being made, layered (it says) with pure 24-carat gold and usually selling for £29.95 apiece. Some, it doesn’t say how many, are available for just £1 and with each £1 going to Help for Heroes.

There’s plenty of small print, no doubt there to ensure that all that glisters really is gold. There’s also a “pre-reservation application” form.

Whether this is a reservation or an application or neither, I am wholly unable to say. It is the Mint with the grammatical hole.

ALL these years we’ve been harping on about the desperate rail service to Teesside Airport – one a week in either direction, Saturdays only – and with no announcement at all it’s been doubled.

Charles Allenby in Malton reports that from December 12 there’s been a Sunday only service – the 12.09 from Eaglescliffe to Darlington – calling at Britain’s least-used station at 12.32. Apparently this is to connect with a northbound Great Central service which also calls at Eaglescliffe.

Charles fails to notice, however, that there’s now a Sunday service in the other direction, 10.09 from Darlington.

In both cases, the route runs through Hartlepool, to and from the MetroCentre, the once-a-week link enabling the railways to claim that the through service between Darlington and Hartlepool still exists without going to the expense of formal withdrawal proceedings.

Intending flyers may not, however, find the isolated railway station a great advert for integrated transport.

Even if able to climb the security fence which separates it from the airport, passengers may experience a considerable wait for a flight.

If things carry on at this rate, the number of planes and trains at Teesside Airport may soon be running neck-and-neck.

A GENTLEMAN wishing only to be known as Old Tintacktovian – a Timothy Hackworth boy, in other words – notes last week’s assertion that Shakespeare borrowed freely from the Bible, but never once mentions it. “Why would he?” asks OT. “He wrote part of it.”

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the King James edition.

Though scholars were happy with the accuracy of their translation, it’s said, they believed that some sections lacked the poetry of the original text and asked prominent writers, including Shakespeare, to polish some of it up.

Old Tintacktovian points to the much-loved Psalm 46 – “God is our refuge and very present help in trouble.”

Its 46th word is “shake”, the 46th from the end is “spear.”

The Bard was 46 at the time.

GUVVY jobs: Charles Harris in Norton-on-Tees substantiates the theory that the term has wartime origins.

“New inventions were tested behind closed doors, effectively hushhush or government jobs. Later, when workmen were doing little jobs for themselves, they’d tell colleagues that it was a guvvy job – hush-hush so far as the management was concerned.”

Jeff Wragg confirms that North Road locomotive works in Darlington was – whisper it – a pretty hushhush place to be. “They even took sleeping bags on night shift, and took turns to have a kip.”

…and finally, Brian Dixon in Darlington reports on an outing to Kimberley, Nottinghamshire, for a family gathering to mark his mum’s 84th birthday.

They lunched at the Camra-listed Nelson and Railway, Brian sensibly remembering all the advice about drinking and driving and restricting himself to a single pint.

Back home, he headed for a party at the home of friends, failed to see three steps in the hallway and landed flat on his back.

Happily, only the bottles he was carrying were broken, but the following morning a severely bruised Brian was barely able to move.

It was only three days later that his mum – “never a beer drinker herself”

– reminded him about the single pint he’d consumed. It was Hardys and Hansons Olde Trip.

The five faces of Fry’s chocolate: Desperation, pacification, expectation, acclamation and realisation. (It’s Fry’s.)