Anyone remember this old ad?

Tea

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Back in the Sixties and Seventies, before tobacco advertising was banned, you couldn't switch on the TV or go to the beach without hearing someone's transistor radio (remember transistor radios?) playing those ubiquitous Viscount ads. (Did you have the Viscount brand in the States? I guess not. Here they were the #1 or #2 for years.)

The jingle was very catchy: "Oh light up a Viscount, a Viscount, a Viscout. Oh light up a Viscount and .... " (I forget the rest.)

I was just listening to the usual trivia on late night radio - or more to the point, not listening, I tune it out most of the time, and the inevitable stupid phone-in quiz was on. Question three was this:

"Who was the last Englishman to serve as Australian Governer General?"

Immediately I thought of that wonderful old soldier who was responsible for recapturing Burma from the Japanese: General, later Field Marshal, Sir William Slim. Later still, after the war, he was made a Lord. As you know, there are various levels of the nobility, in rough order from lowest to highest, they go: baron, viscount, earl, marquess and duke. Only a prince is superior to a duke. (More details here, if anyone is interested.) And, as it happened, Field Marshal Slim was raised to the second level of nobility, as a reward for his services. A little earlier, he had been sent out to Australia and served as Governer General for many years. He was one of the very best generals of WW2, and proved to be a very popular Governer General too - so much so that Sir William Slim yielded to requests to stay on for much longer than his original appointment. Eventually, in 1960, he retired and went home and became Viscount Slim. He died in 1970.

This was headline news here, of course, and was covered on all the TV station news broadcasts. On Channel Nine, they broadcast the sad news, and then went to an ad break.

"Oh light up a Viscount, a Viscount, a Viscout. Oh light up a Viscount and .... "










Baron, Viscount, Duke
 

time

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Jan 18, 2002
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Tea, you mizpelled "Woopz", "lazt", "juzt", "znuck" and "zee".

Zurely a record, even for you?
 
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