#alternate alternate A to Z Terms of Use For a better experience on your device, try our mobile site. BBC Accessibility links * Skip to content * Skip to local navigation * Accessibility Help BBC iD Sign in BBC navigation * News * Sport * Weather * Earth * Future * Shop * TV * Radio * More… Search term: ____________________ (BUTTON) Search BBC News Magazine * Home * UK * Africa * Asia * Australia * Europe * Latin America * Mid-East * US & Canada * Business * Health * Sci/Environment * Tech * Entertainment * Video * Magazine * In Pictures * Also in the News * Editors' Blog * Have Your Say * World News TV * World Service Radio * Special Reports 26 September 2014 Last updated at 01:54 GMT Share this page * Delicious * Digg * Facebook * reddit * StumbleUpon * Twitter * Email * Print Nostalgia for an old-fashioned milk bottle By Tom Heyden BBC News Magazine Look and Learn Continue reading the main story In today's Magazine * The sheikh who listened to Nazi radio * The lost sons * The cigarettes that worry tobacco firms * The photos stopping people in the street The announcement that Dairy Crest's last glass milk bottle plant is to close has prompted a flood of nostalgia for a former staple of the British street. Travel back in time to a British doorstep in 1975 at, say, 7.30am. There's almost certainly a couple of foil-topped glass milk bottles there. Maybe more. Some of the tops may have been pecked by birds, although if you left a couple of plastic cups out the milkman probably popped those over the top of the bottles to protect them. Then, 94% of milk was put into glass bottles, according to Dairy Crest. By 2012, this was just 4%. "I can remember that wonderful clinking sound of the milk bottles arriving," says consumer historian Robert Opie. Then there was the ubiquitous morning whirr of electric floats. Others remember the colour coding on the foil tops. And that weirdly satisfying way of opening them - a push just powerful enough to dent but not break it. Bird pecking milk bottle top "Birds were attracted to peck away at the caps to get to the cream line," says Paul Luke, editor of Milk Bottle News and the owner of some 12,000-13,000 glass milk bottles. Cream lines occurred all the time even if it was semi-skimmed, he says, since milk didn't go through the same standardisation process as it does today. "When you poured out the milk you'd get a big bulk of cream drop on to your cornflakes, rather than your watered down milk [of today]," Luke says. As a nine-year-old, Luke started helping out milkmen on their rounds during the 1980s. Leaving out the empties represents many people's first understanding of the concept of recycling. But there's been a slow and sure decline, says Opie. The proliferation of fridges in the 1950s, which allowed milk to be kept longer, meant fewer daily deliveries. By the 1990s, the deregulation of the British milk industry and the decision by supermarkets to sell milk - cheaply - in plastic containers changed everything. Some still mourn - on taste grounds alone. "I can remember that relatively traumatic moment when I switched from glass to a carton," says Opie. "There was just something innately wrong about pouring milk out of a carton because it didn't have that refreshing coolness of a glass bottle. "A cold bottle of milk has a certain integrity to it and the glass retains that." But, of course, Opie - as well as virtually everybody else - went ahead and made the switch. "Nostalgia has a waft which extends into every sphere you can think of," Opie says, "and sometimes it's only when things disappear that you suddenly stand back and think, 'Oh, what a shame'." Milk bottles, generic Convenience and cost has triumphed. Smaller dairies may continue to provide milk in glass bottles. But Dairy Crest switching to plastic is significant. In 1970, almost 99% of milk would have been door-delivered, says Tom Phelps, the author of The British Milkman. Last year Dairy UK found that doorstep delivery stands at less than 5% of the liquid dairy market. But there are still about 5,000 milkmen left in the UK, Phelps estimates. About 1,400 of those are employed by Dairy Crest, which stresses that the switch to plastic containers is to "ensure the livelihoods" of its milkmen and women. Much of this is due to the costs of plastic against glass. Glass bottles are more expensive to make than plastic containers and also weigh 15 times more, says Dairy Crest. This means plastic containers are cheaper to transport, with the company claiming that they're now as environmentally friendly as glass bottles. The issue is unclear. The Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) published a 2010 paper suggesting that the carbon footprint of glass bottles over the course of a life-cycle is helped by the fact it is recycled. The era of the glass milk bottle has left a legacy. Not least memories of the way milk used to be advertised. "The best ever promotion to sell milk was done by Unigate," says Luke. He's referring to the series of 1970s adverts in which mysterious creatures called Humphreys attempted to steal milk with long straws. "Watch out, watch out, there's a Humphrey about," was the slogan. Muhammad Ali got involved. Taken from YouTube ad Unigate Gotta lotta bottle ad The catchphrase "Gotta lotta bottle" followed. It's hard to imagine a series of more 1980s-style videos - whirlwinds of dazzling neon, innuendo, and the chanted tagline "nice cold, ice cold milk". This was an era when Linford Christie raced a milk float. But the nostalgia relates as much to the diminished presence of the milkman as the bottles themselves. Their ever-presence in British lives made them ripe for pop culture parody - mainly the faintly ludicrous idea of them having adulterous relationships with lonely women. Benny Hill's 1970 comedy song Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West) - one of David Cameron's Desert Island Discs - was about the protagonist's love for a lonely widow named Sue. A Monty Python sketch depicted a semi-dressed woman luring Michael Palin's milkman into her house - only to lock him away into a room of other long-lost milkmen. line A brief bottle history Milk bottles, generic * First glass milk bottle patented in 1874 in the US * Gradually transferred to UK but until WW1 milk mainly delivered on horse-drawn "milk pram" - ladled into tin cans from a churn * At that time, milk was delivered three times a day - "pudding round" later dropped due to WW1 constraints * By 1920s and 1930s glass-bottled milk is the norm, but bottles had cardboard slips at the top, which children used to play "pogs" * 1935 - slender-neck bottle introduced, giving the illusion of more cream and supposedly favoured by housewives * Aluminium foil tops eventually replaces cardboard for hygiene concerns - but WW2 shortages mean experimentation with zinc, tin and lead-based alternatives * Estimated 30 million lost glass bottles a year during WW2 - some return to tin can delivery using ladles * 1980 - modern version of bottle introduced. Shorter and wider, initially it was nicknamed "dumpy" Source: Tom Phelps, author of The British Milkman line It was probably an unfair reputation for most milkmen, but the jokes rested on the centrality of milkmen in daily life. Milkmen regularly had a career of 30 to 40 years and often became family friends, says Phelps. "The milkman would go around and collect the money and would then be invited in for a cup of tea," adds Luke. Familiarity meant that customers were happy to leave money in the bottles. Or sometimes just notes like "not this week, thanks". Not that these were always intelligible, recalls Phelps from his brief personal experience as a milkman before he worked for Unigate. Benny Hill as a milkman Benny Hill dressed as a milkman But often there were birthday messages, and sometimes even gifts for milkmen's newborn kids, he says. Such message-in-a-bottle correspondence seems like a quaint relic today. And now face-to-face interaction is even sparser. Milkmen sometimes start their shift as early as 23:00 the night before, Luke says. Fewer customers mean that they have to cover larger areas, he adds. Payments are often by debit card. "Certainly now, when you go into a school and ask a child where milk comes from, the response is always Tesco's," says Luke. "You show them milk bottles and they don't know what they are." Norman Wisdom in Early Bird 1965 Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox. More on This Story In today's Magazine * Old radio The sheikh who listened to Nazi radio Early in World War Two, Britain's agent in Sharjah noticed an alarming rise in support for Nazi Germany - so he slipped on a disguise to find out who was responsible. ______________________________________________________________ * Naftali Fraenkel and Mohammed Abu Khdeir The lost sons The story two murdered teenage boys, an Israeli and a Palestinian, whose mistake was to stand by the side of a dark road. ______________________________________________________________ * The cigarettes that worry tobacco firms Tobacco companies warn smuggling could rise if the UK removes branding from cigarette packets - when Australia did this the biggest rise was in sales of brands known as "illicit whites". * The photos stopping people in the street Photographer Daniel Morel has opened an exhibition on Haiti's streets to remember the earthquake that killed an estimated 250,000 people. * The Texas flag. Texas parents object to 'Lebanon' school In Frisco, Texas, some parents say they feel naming a new high school after an old farming town recalls the 'sad and turmoil' of the Middle East. ______________________________________________________________ Share this page * Delicious * Digg * Facebook * reddit * StumbleUpon * Twitter * Email * Print Top Stories * Islamic State militants (file photo) Japan PM outrage at 'hostage death' * Rockets kill 30 in eastern Ukraine * US planes targeted by bomb threats * Lungu wins Zambia presidential poll * World leaders pay respects in Riyadh Features & Analysis * Clutter - generic Clutter epidemic The hazards of drowning in too much stuff ______________________________________________________________ * Old radio Radio sheikh The British ally who played Nazi broadcasts for all to hear ______________________________________________________________ * brain scan Mysterious phenomenon What causes deja vu - and how does it feel to have it constantly? ______________________________________________________________ * Rat Rodent problem The project to kill an island's entire rat population ______________________________________________________________ Most Popular Shared 1. 1: UK Ebola nurse 'happy to be alive' 2. 2: Viewpoint: The hazards of too much stuff 3. 3: Tangerine Dream's Froese dies at 70 4. 4: Ukraine rebels in Mariupol 'attack' 5. 5: The man trapped in constant deja vu Read 1. 1: Coin shows Cleopatra's ugly truth 2. 2: Rockets kill 30 in eastern Ukraine 3. 3: E-mail error ends up on road sign 4. 4: Japan PM outrage at 'hostage death' 5. 5: US planes targeted by bomb threats 6. 6: Viewpoint: The hazards of too much stuff 7. 7: Obituary: Benazir Bhutto 8. 8: Condoms 'too big' for Indian men 9. 9: Cooper brings Elephant Man to London 10. 10: Brazil in 'worst water crisis' Video/Audio 1. 2: Transgender 13-year-old 'like any girl' Watch 2. 4: Is this the goal of the year? Watch 3. 5: Crew plucked from sinking boat Watch 4. 6: Japan's resurgent army - in 60 secs Watch 5. 7: Indians enjoy tech success in US Watch 6. 8: China's President Xi Jinping - 60 secs Watch 7. 9: Footage captures hippo chasing boat Watch 8. 10: What is King Abdullah's legacy? Watch Elsewhere on the BBC * RV Life on the road Real stories on the joys and pains of mobile living Programmes * Circus performer The Travel Show Watch Mama Africa’s circus school - the ground-breaking production seen by seven million people Services * Mobile * Connected TV * News feeds * Alerts * E-mail news About BBC News * Editors' blog * BBC College of Journalism * News sources * Media Action * Editorial Guidelines BBC links * + Mobile site + Terms of Use + About the BBC * + Advertise With Us + Privacy + Accessibility Help * + Ad Choices + Cookies + Contact the BBC * + Parental Guidance BBC Copyright © 2015 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.