Sometimes you can’t make this stuff up. Wayne Rooney has signed an advertising deal to be the new face of Hovis, an English bread company.
Hovis is better known for its TV commercial than its actual bread. Its “The Boy On The Bike” commercial is the most popular TV advertisement in British history. Created in 1973, there are millions of Brits around the world (myself included) that remember the dulcet tones of the commercial sweeping across the living room as a northern lad pushed his bike up the cobbled street.
For many, it’s the quintessential image of northern England right up there with TV soap operas (and institutions) such as Coronation Street and Emmerdale and the classic radio serial, The Archers, which has been on radio since 1950 and incredibly has published more than 15,500 episodes.
So along comes Wayne Rooney, the quintessential northern lad of English football, to evoke memories of the Boy On His Bike by being featured in a new commercial set in Liverpool. The new advert will be in the spirit of the 1973 classic with a storyline that’ll include key moments in British history over the last 100 years.
Rooney will be paid £150,000 for the advert, which is much more than what the boy on his bike originally got, I’m quite sure.
Let’s hope the Hovis advertising deal sparks some great ideas for a future episode of I’m On Setanta Sports!
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..with the minor discrepancy that the ‘Northern England’ cobbled street was Gold Hill at Shaftesbury in Northern DORSET.
The ad itself was by Ridley Scott, by the way.
This is a lot of nonsense. My grandson is the main character in the ad. No idea how the rumour started.