Glass act milkies are floating back
★ THEY’RE really milking it... milkmen and women are back after they went into decline.
Company Milk & More has launched a major drive for new staff after demand for deliveries jumped by a quarter in the last year.
★ It’s thought the surge is down to people trying to avoid plastic waste by getting milk in glass bottles instead.
★ Here NATASHA WYNARCZYK rounds up 12 udderly top facts on milkmen.
1 MILKMEN first appeared in Great Britain in 1860, when the first railway lines allowed fresh milk to arrive in cities from the countryside.
2 GLASS bottles came into use in the 1880s. Before this, milkmen took churns on their rounds and filled customers’ jugs straight from them.
3 BY 1975, 94% of milk was in glass bottles – but by 2016 bottled milk had reduced to just 3%.
4 CURRENTLY an estimated 5,000 people work milk rounds in the UK. Milk & More, which controls half the UK’s delivery market, is looking to hire more staff, offering a £24,000 a year salary.
5 MILK floats usually travel at around 10mph – but the fastest ever speed achieved by one was 84.5mph. It was modified by Weetabix On The Go and driven by rally driver Rob Gill in June 2014.
6 THE old joke about wives having an affair with the milkman comes from the early 20th century. At this time, women tended to stay at home. As the milkman visited when the man was at work, it created an opportunity for adultery.
IN 1971, comedian Benny Hill took 7 the Christmas No.1 with his innuendo-laden novelty song Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West). When David Cameron appeared on Desert Island
Discs in 2006, he picked it as one of his favourite eight songs.
8 THE Father Ted episode Speed 3 was a pastiche of the Sandra Bullock Speed films. It sees milkman Pat Mustard getting his revenge by putting a bomb on a milk float driven by Father Dougal, with the bomb due to go off if the speed drops below 4mph.
9 IN the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock classic The 39 Steps, character Richard Hannay conceals himself as a milkman, while the 1987 Timothy Dalton James Bond movie The Living Daylights also saw hitman Necros adopt a milkman disguise.
10 LAST year, author Anna Burns became the first ever Northern Irish writer to win the Man Booker prize with her novel Milkman, which tells of a teenage girl stalked by a paramilitary who calls himself ‘Milkman’.
11 MILKMEN and women don’t just deliver milk. Last month, it was reported you could have bottled beer brought to your door and some firms have added Christmas turkeys.
12 PLANT-based milk brand Plenish is currently trialling a robot delivery service in Milton Keynes. Customers can order litre bottles of the milk via robot courier company Starship’s app and have it delivered to their door by a six-wheeled bot.