Do you want a Flake with that?
LEE GRIMSDITCH SERVES UP MEMORIES OF WHEN BODDINGTONS BITTER WAS THE ‘CREAM OF MANCHESTER’
AT the height of its success it was ‘the cream of Manchester’ but now Boddingtons Brewery is a name associated with the city’s past. In the 1990s, Boddingtons was swept along on a wave of Madchester cool, where everything the city produced seemed to attract an eager audience across Britain and beyond.
Thanks to a corporate takeover – and some genius marketing – by 1997 its creamy, bitter was being exported to more than 40 countries.
The brewery in Strangeways was an institution in the city for over 200 years. Founded by grain merchants Thomas Caister and Thomas Fray in 1778, the business of selling beer to factory workers was a winner.
Henry Boddington, born in 1813, rose through the company to become a partner and, in 1853, took out a loan to become its sole owner. The business continued to boom, with 100,000 barrels of beer a year being brewed by 1877 – the same year a fire almost destroyed the brewery.
Henry Snr died in 1886 to be succeeded by his son Henry Jnr. Boddies continued to brew its bitters and ales on through World War One, the Depression of the 1930s and World War Two – though German bombers left the brewery in flames in 1940.
Post-war success meant that national brewers took an interest in the Manchester plant. But Boddingtons remained independent until 1989 when the Strangeways Brewery and Boddingtons brand – but not the estate – were sold to shareholders Whitbread for £50.7m.
Although Boddingtons had experienced a decline before the takeover, its beers retained their popularity in Greater Manchester, with only five per cent of its sales outside the North West.
But Whitbread transformed Boddingtons into a national brand by expanding its production, and by 1993 most of its sales were from outside the North West, including overseas.
Whitbread’s chief executive, Peter Jarvis, said in 1995: “It was very fortuitous that the brewery was in Manchester. To outsiders, Manchester is a very attractive place – known the world over for soccer, art, music and broadcasting. It would be difficult to have a Cream of Wolverhampton even though Banks’s beer is very good. People do not aspire to visit Wolverhampton. On the whole they try to by-pass it.”
Another key component of Boddingtons success in the ‘90s was its marketing campaigns.
The London-based Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) advertising agency were appointed to rebrand Boddingtons. The agency created some of the most recognisable advertising slogans in history and helped turn Manchester model Melanie Sykes into a household name.
BBH introduced the ‘Cream of Manchester’ tagline to Boddingtons products as part of its rebrand in 1991. Originally a set of print adverts, the campaign revitalised the brand’s image and extended to TV in 1992.
That year, an ad featured a woman using the foam from the top of a pint of Boddies as part of her skin-care regime. An actor gets a whiff of the creamy beer foam she has rubbed into her cheek, and says: “By ‘eck, ye’ smell gorgeous tonight, petal.”
Another of its iconic adverts was a spoof on the Walls Cornetto campaign – in which an actress glides along the Irwell in a gondola with a pint of Boddies. The actress utters the line: “By ‘eck, it’s gorgeous.” An actor in a passing gondola – who had his pint of Boddingtons swiped by the woman
– says: “That Gladys Althorp, she never buys ‘er own.”
From 1996 to 1999, the previously unknown Melanie Sykes got her big break in the Boddingtons TV campaign. In one memorable advert, the Mossleyborn model pops her head out of an ice cream van, passing an athlete a pint of bitter instead of a cone and says: “Do you want a Flake in that, love?”
In 2000, Whitbread became part of Belgian brewer Interbrew, which owned Stella Artois. In September 2004, the new owners announced the closure of the Strangeways brewery, with most of its production moving to Wales and Lancashire, while its cask ale production moved to Hydes Brewery in Moss Side.
The decision to close the Strangeways site was made as the site had become a valuable asset. The factory chimney came down when the brewery was demolished in 2007.
The site was sold and used for parking, but since 2022 it has been home to City Campus Manchester. There are now plans to build tower blocks containing apartments there.
And while the Strangeways brewery is now a thing of the past, the Boddingtons brand lives on as part of its owner’s, Anheuser-Busch Inbev (the largest brewers in the world’s) portfolio of beers.
It would be difficult to have a Cream of Wolverhampton. People do not aspire to visit Wolverhampton. On the whole they try to by-pass it.
Whitbread boss Peter Jarvis in 1995