Britain's most popular tea.
"Coo-ee, Mr Shifter, would you like refreshment?"
— from a 1980s TV advert
PG Tips has been an iconic part of the British home all my life. It seems always to have been there, and it was a surprise to learn that the brand dates back only to the 1930s. Originally marketed as having medicinal benefit using the name "Digestive Tea" (later "Pre-Gestee"), it gained its name from the salesmen and grocers who referred to it as simply "PG". Later regulations required that they drop the word "digestive" from branding and labels and in the early 1950s it was rebranded as "PG Tips", a reference to the fact that they used only the young tips of the tea bush to create the blend.
Brooke Bond, the brand owner, became the largest tea company in the world by the end of the '50s, largely on the back of this brand. People of my generation remember two things about the tea; one was the famous TV adverts featuring chimpanzees and the other was the inclusion of "tea cards", included in every packet of loose tea (and perhaps in the boxes of tea bags too, I forget).
The chimp adverts featured a variety of household scenes involving chimpanzees dressed as humans and doing human things. It was easy to think of them as human, largely because they appeared to be talking. As a child I thought it astonishing that the people from the telly could train them this well, and it was only recently that I discovered (thanks to the TV show QI) that the producers had encouraged the animals to eat large spoonsful of peanut butter, which of course stuck to their teeth and palates causing them to attempt to dislodge and swallow it. It was very convincing. It still is. Get thee to YouTube and look up the PG Chimps.
The adverts were very popular, beginning in the '50s with chimp tea parties and ending with some quite elaborate productions, my favourite being the father and son moving a piano down a set of stairs. The quotation above is taken from this ad, and it can still make me chuckle. The ads were intended not just to amuse, but to promote a nostalgia for times past, harking back to some stereotypes of the working-class Briton, all flat caps for the men and curlers for the women. Simpler, comfortable times. The chimp ads ended in 2002, having run for 46 years.¹
The tea cards were another thing. Modelled after cigarette cards (intended to strengthen the packaging and be collectible), they were aimed at children and there were an amazing number of sets of them. Of course the young wertperch used to collect them, the cricketers, the motor cars, flowers, butterflies, trees, the list seems endless now. One of the reasons I came to drink so much tea (and put a little extra in every pot) was so that we'd have to buy more tea, and sooner. The first fight I remember getting into was when a bigger boy at my school tried to steal one of my cards and I wouldn't let him. As I recall he tried to snatch it out of my hand and I kicked him until he gave it up. It may put me off trading cards for life, but my love of tea remains.
The tea seems to be everywhere. Every grocery shop in England seems to have it and alongside the equally revered Yorkshire Tea it is truly a piece of Britain. Since moving to the US, these two remain my tea of choice, PG Tips being the more available, and not just in the mainstream grocery stores. Almost every Indian store carries them, so I can slake my thirst and satisfy my nostalgia everywhere I go.
¹ Since the year I was born, in fact.
Some of the collectible cards
Iron node 23
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