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Adverts
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  2. Dambusters

Bomb bouncing on a pint of lager

There are more pictures captured from the advert below. Selecting any of the small thumbnail images will show a larger version of the picture in the main part of the page.

You can also watch the advert itself, thanks to good old YouTube! »

  1. Diving to save the bomb
  2. The sentry emerges from a door, sandwich in hand
  3. The sentry sees the plane
  4. The sentry reacts with shock to the dropping of the bomb
  5. The sentry throws his sandwich in the air
  6. The sentry dives to the right save a bomb
  7. The sentry dives to the left to save a bomb
  8. The sentry looking triumphantly at the plane
  9. The bomb bounces across the tops of several glasses of lager

Carling Black Label 'Dambusters' advert - German sentry

- I bet he drinks Carling Black Label...

Well, this is what I'm chiefly remembered for. Two days work out of a twenty year career, a ninety-second piece of work shown over a year or so from 1989 to 1990. The advert is brilliant though, a lovingly re-created spoof of the classic sequence in the movie 'The Dambusters' where the Lancaster flies low over the lake and drops Sir Barnes Wallis's famous 'bouncing bombs'. This time, however, the german sentry transforms into a football goalkeeper, diving and leaping to deflect every bomb before they can land. Cut to the pilot and bombadier in the Lancaster. One turns to the other and says, "I bet he drinks Carling Black Label."

Even now, over a decade later, people still remember the ad, and it placed gratifyingly high at number 17 in the 'Hundred Greatest Adverts of all time' on Channel 4 - one place above the 'Shake & Vac' woman! Immortality of a kind, I suppose. It's also regularly shown on 'The Funniest Adverts Ever...Probably'.

Diving to save the bomb
The sentry emerges from a door, sandwich in hand
The sentry sees the plane
The sentry reacts with shock to the dropping of the bomb
The sentry throws his sandwich in the air
The sentry dives to the right save a bomb
The sentry dives to the left to save a bomb
The sentry looking triumphantly at the plane
The bomb bounces across the tops of several glasses of lager

For my bit of the shoot the production team had built the dam on a soundstage at Pinewood and flooded the stage (the model shots and cockpit sequences had already been shot). It was quite intimidating walking onto the huge set for the first time as the only performer, and knowing all these people were here and all that money had been spent...for me! No pressure there, then! For the 'saving the bombs' sequence, one of the production team stood on a stepladder in the middle of the 'lake' and threw the bombs at me. We did that for about eight hours, and those balls were heavy. I was bruised all over afterwards from landing on the rubber flagstones over trestles after every dive. I earned my money, believe me!

It was a stroke of luck, getting this ad - just a random 'audition' through a casting director. All I had to do was save beachballs 'as funnily as possible' in front of the camera for a few seconds. Some days later the job was mine. Adverts are great for an actor - they don't take much time and, if they're shown nationally in peak-time slots, pay more money than you'll ever earn in theatre. I only ever did three, though, and this one was the only one that really paid anything. Still, I was grateful. I earned more from that two days' work than I earned in the whole of either of the two years before or after it!