Great Western Coffee Shop

That's what this lovely BR advert from 1988 was nicknamed -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsyyJaX0j3Y

We were talking in the office about use of videos to promote rail travel and I mentioned this.  Thanks to the uploader and You Tube, we can still watch it today.

A lovely production.  Was it just my eyesight or was the HST running wrong line on the Forth bridge?

Yes, that link still works.  :)


Your eyesight is fine - that HST was running wrong line. See 1:26 minutes into that clip.  ;)

By the way: the above comments from me have been prompted solely by my reviewing this particular topic, as part of my ongoing work on splitting the 'wider picture' board.

The most striking thing about that advert, from a 2017 point of view, apart from the fact that it was made at all, is the voice. But I expect that as much as being a 1980s advertising voice, it was a voice deemed appropriate for Betjeman.

... or Auden! Since the original was spoken as a verse commentary on a film (Night Mail) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmciuKsBOi0), and John Grierson's voice and very different delivery would have been familiar to quite a few then (1988) or now (2017), the new voice and style were probably chosen to try make a link from then (1935) to now (1988).

Umm, yes, not sure why I thought Betjeman.*  :-[  :-[ Yes, it makes that link and in doing so makes 1988 seem closer in some ways to 1935 than to 2017; which I think it was!

*Edit: Probably because Betjeman is already associated with ye olde steame traines, whereas about Auden I know virtually nothing. So let's have another  :-[.