INT. MOTHER BLACK CAP. PUBLIC HOUSE. DAY
This is an Irish pub. The bar is full of men. Only two women in here and they look like men. Faces like rotten beetroots. It’s a horrible place. Shit-coloured formica. Carpet like the surface of a road. The atmosphere is rank with smoke and Irish accent. WITHNAIL leads the way to the bar and is served at once.
WITHNAIL: Two large gins. Two pints of cider. Ice in the cider.
(Taken from ‘Withnail and I’, Bruce Robinson)
The revival of the cider category, through the suggestion of serving it over ice, has long been credited to Magners.
But has it ever been publicly acknowledged that the idea was actually advanced almost twenty years earlier in the script of Withnail and I?
Also makes me wonder what other potential commercial gems might lie within the screenplay.
Could the Camberwell carrot now be monetised?
Lighter fuel repositioned as the recession-friendly way to get wasted?
Or might M&S consider a ‘Cake and Fine Wine’ deal as the follow-up to its dine in for a tenner promotion?
The greatest decade in the history of mankind may indeed be over.
But the marketing opportunities have surely only just begun…
