RIBENA BOY WHO BECAME AN EARL

IN THIS 1962 advert, Tim Bentinck plays a boy who sips on his daily glass of Ribena. Before this, he got out of bed early, pretended to shave using his father’s razor and rode his bike through a huge puddle in the rain.

The voice-over says ‘early to rise, early to bed makes a man’ — before it talks of the health benefits of Ribena.

Tim, 64, who now plays David Archer in The Archers and is the 12th Earl of Portland, was nine when he made the advert. He got the job because his late father, Henry Bentinck, the 11th Earl, directed the ad for the former advertising company J. Walter Thompson. The Norfolk fire brigade provided the rain.

Tim says: ‘I had to do multiple takes because they kept saying “Can you keep your eyes open?” — and when you have water splashing in your face, you can’t. I did it time after time and after a bit my corduroy trousers were soaking wet, then the crotch ripped when I got on the bike. I was really scared they’d see it on film.’

The advert was filmed at the home of some family friends in Norfolk. Tim became such good pals with a son in the family that they were best man at each other’s weddings.

Tim was paid £35 for his day’s work and was chaperoned by a secretary.

He tells the story of the Ribena ad in his autobiography, Being David Archer: And Other Unusual Ways of Earning A Living, out on October 5.