Chillichap's Review - The 1973 Hovis Bread Advert - Boy on the Bike British TV Classical Music Largo from Dvorak's Symphony No. 9. (New World Symphony)

Hello!

It doesn't matter what age you are, classical music touches you in one way or another. For me, it was via TV adverts as a young lad. One that sticks in my mind (I was five at the time) was the Hovis advert where a boy, wearing a baker's apron, was pushing his bike up a steep cobbled hill, which I assumed was in Yorkshire (because the old man retelling the tale had a Yorkshire accent). In his huge basket was the bread that he had to deliver. Once the boy had completed this arduous task, he freewheeled all the way back down the hill. Interesting fact-this advert was directed by a young Ridley Scott-who later went on to direct Alien and Gladiator! The music being played was Largo from Dvorak's Symphony No. 9. I remember liking the music played by the Ashington Colliery brass band (which was from Northumberland), as it seemed in sync with the lad's struggle and seemed a link to a better time of village life.


The advert was actually filmed on Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset, and became famous as 'the bike ride' or 'boy on a bike'. This advert probably became one of Britain's most loved adverts.  It never dawned on me to think that the music came from anywhere else. I just naively assumed it had been designed for the advert. This erroneous thought accompanied me as I grew up with many more TV and Radio adverts and introductions. I suppose everything changed when we started to have access to the internet-especially YouTube. I found that I was able to fact-find and also almost time-travel. I could research long-lost ditties I vaguely remembered and find old nostalgic TV adverts, recapturing my lost youth.


Amazingly the star of this advert Carl Barlow, at the tender age of sixty-four returned to the scene of the advert fifty years after it first aired. This is him below:-




Conclusion
There's something very comforting about watching old TV adverts from childhood and even later on. It's like their words, music, and pictures are ingrained in our memories and we get a rush of nostalgia harking back to happier, more simple times. YouTube is the place for this and I can spend many hours getting lost in the TV adverts of yesteryear. 

Thanks for reading.

Matt AKA Chillichap

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