Asahi Underground Posters…

I was in the loft the other day looking for something and came across some forgotten stolen goods…. three cardboard advertising posters taken from London Underground Tube trains…

Many years ago, there was an advertising campaign for Asahi Super Dry Lager.. I would guess it would have been sometime around the turn of the Century. As I remember there were a series of six of them, all featuring odd and strangely English “celebrities” (and I use the word advisedly) in eccentric and unlikely poses…

This Englishness and eccentricity was obviously the key to the campaign, and the bizarre and almost random use of words chosen to describe each of the stars on the poster, only accentuated the effect of the image… I always liked Henry Kelly’s “Pride & Integrity. Manly” or Dickie Davis’s “Remarkable and Finesse. So Good. Or how about Debbie McGee as “Breeding. Extra Stately” and Richard Whitely as “Commanding and A Worldly”.

I was so taken by the whole campaign that I set about trying to collect them all, furtively hanging around tube carriages until I thought no one was looking and pulling them out of the metal frames. Sadly I didn’t get them all, partly because I’m not wholly convinced that hundreds of other people weren’t taking them as well, as they did seem to disappear from the trains very quickly…

There is very little on the net about the campaign, but I think it was by WCRS Agency… and whether you remember them or not, the images of Debbie McGee with a riding crop and Henry Kelly in his bath robe will (worryingly) live with me forever…

(The three originals I have are Messrs Whitely, Davies and Kelly, and I will get them copied and put up here asap…)