A BOVRIL LIFT TO TV STARDOM
STOOD up by her teenage date outside the cinema, a girl tearfully returns home chilled to the bone. She’s revived by a cup of mum’s hot Bovril, and consoles herself by saying: ‘He’s got big ears anyway.’
Sally Thomsett, now 67, was 22 when she filmed this fondly remembered 1972 advert, though she looked much younger. Two years earlier, she had starred in The Railway Children, playing the 11-year-old little sister of Jenny Agutter’s heroine Bobbie. After the advert came out, men on building sites would shout: ‘Never mind love, he had big ears anyway.’
Sally can’t recall how much she was paid or what she spent the money on, but she thinks it was probably a car. ‘I used to spend most of my money on property and cars and more on cars than property, unfortunately,’ she says.
Sally’s relief on being in front of the fire in the last scene was genuine — the director had made her stand outside in the snow.
She said: ‘It actually was Bovril, but somebody had put a great big slug of brandy in it to warm me up.’
The Bovril advert proved lucky for Sally. It led to her being cast as Jo in Man About The House, a hugely popular ITV comedy series that ran for three years.