The British public house used to be an establishment of two halves. Turn right as you went in (or was it left?), and you hit the Saloon Bar: a suave, sophisticated, not to mention carpeted, area wherein soft music and plastic pineapples full of ice provided the perfect environment for giggly reps to be bought glasses of Babycham and Calviere by hopeful unemployed-yet-Datsun-owning lads in their best Burlington shirts. On the other side, however, you hit the resolutely all-male, fruit machines-‘n’-Capstan-fog of the Public Bar, the chief signifier of which was an A3 card decorated with a topless Page Three Stunner, her ample charms obscured by twenty-odd packets of Big D (the nation’s number two nut, at least). In the days before Sky Sports, it was considered a prime source of entertainment for prannyish young shavers to ask the barman for two packets of nuts and giggle like idiots at the anticipated location of the subsequent comestible removal. Disappointment often came their way along with the bags of ready-salted, but then the Big D card was little more than a high-salt, high-testosterone advent calendar. Albeit one probably not endorsed by the General Synod.
Local Yokel
February 9, 2010 at 11:12 am
….or a cartoon pig,masquerading as a butcher(stripy apron,straw boater).
televisualcabbage
February 9, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Mmmm… Mr Porky! The favourite of every cornershop everywhere, usually to be found with a full supply still as no-one has brought them owning to being as hard as pebbles to eat….
Jill Sandwich
July 11, 2011 at 11:59 am
I’ve seen Big D nut advent calendars in Makro. They still have racy ladies on them but for some reason they have their tops on :-/
Richard Davies
September 18, 2012 at 5:55 pm
I remember in one of the later episodes of Teenage Health Freak Peter Payne & his friends kept buying bags of peanuts to try & see what the pin up on backing card looked like.
They ran out of money long before anything of interest was revealed, & got the landlord’s nerves as well.
Applemask
June 18, 2013 at 1:21 pm
Albeit an advent calendar celebrating the birth of tits rather than Christ.
Glenn Aylett
June 6, 2024 at 10:02 pm
Another thing that vanished in the nineties, the cans of Tennents lager that were adorned by glamour models. Yes as you drank your can of Tennents Super, you could admire Morag on the side of the can in a swimsuit. Odd to think these days somethng as mundane as a can of beer would be adorned by a scantily clad lady.
Palimpsest
June 10, 2024 at 5:26 pm
Sometime around 80 or 81 there used to be a consecutive line of Big D peanut boards in the local chip shop. From what I can remember the owner used to strategically remove the requested nut bags until the doxies face and shoulders were visible before replacing it with a new board. Presumeably the unsold peanuts, which allegedly covered the devochkas modesty, were kept in that cardboard box with the fist sized hole in one side. I use the term allegedly as I never saw the nut board bare of its outer layer and I’m inclined to think that said strumpet was probably clothed in something other than her mascara.
Glenn Aylett
June 14, 2024 at 6:19 pm
I csn remember a local pub that sold Big D nuts in this fashion and also had a video night, just as VCRs were catching on, that showed ” adult” films on weekday nights. Years before Sky Sports and football got the punters in, a premiere of Electric Blue 10 would have young men( and a few old boys) filling the bar of the pub. Interesting how pubs made their money in 1982.