Watch the full ad here:

Stephen's thoughts:

"In the heady days of late 80s advertising, the ‘lager wars’ were at their peak, with big brands fighting for drinkers’ preferences through heavy TV advertising in an ultra-competitive market. Glamorous imports like Foster’s, Castlemaine XXXX, Carlsberg and Stella made the home-grown brand leader, Carling Black Label fight fire with fire, with all aiming for the most entertaining and engaging campaigns. The prevailing wisdom was that we ‘drank the advertising’, such was its power and presence. Carling was only off air for a handful of weeks in its heartlands, which meant lots of telly and the highest bar on the creative work.

I joined WCRS in 1989 as account director on Carling and looking back through thick files of scripts, I geekily calculated that creative department wrote about 70 scripts for every one that aired, having survived rigorous client scrutiny and passing the toughest test in consumer research, such were the high audience expectations of beer ads.

But occasionally a script dodged all the flak to fly from creative desk to living room screen. ‘Dambusters’ was one of the few and arguably this was the ‘I bet he drinks Carling Black Label’ campaign’s finest hour. A lager-war winning combination of classic war film spoof, England v Germany football, plucky RAF versus an even pluckier German guard, a fabulous script by Jonathan Greehhalgh and Kes Gray, thick with visual and verbal gags (spot the large German sausage) all realised through brilliant direction and visual effects by genius director Roger Woodburn at Park Village. Shot in the same Welsh reservoirs where 617 Squadron trained, with the Carling front men Mark Arden and Steve Frost in a real Lancaster cockpit, the ad was an instant hit and regularly features on lists of the all-time greats."