Illustrator and author Raymond Briggs has also died.

He is most famous for The Snowman, now a regular fixture of British Christmas TV scheduling.

His contribution to the world of stories extends way beyond that. Not only a grumpy Father Christmas but also Fungus the Bogeyman, then the more adult oriented When the Wind Blows and The Tin-pot General and the Old Iron Woman to name but a few.

Raymond Redvers Briggs; 18/1/1934 – 9/8/2022. So it goes.

The title to yesterday’s post was, of course, an allusion to an advertising slogan used by Barr’s, the Scottish soft drink manufacturers, to promote Irn Bru, which outsells Coca-Cola in Scotland. Barr’s use of their Scottishness is astute. I have posted their High School Musical parody before.

Irn Bru has had a few slogans, starting off in a comic, The Adventures of Ba-Bru and Sandy.

The two best, however, are undoubtedly, “Made in Scotland From Girders” and “It’s Your Other National Drink.”

The last is doubly appropriate since the first national drink – whisky – has unfortunate side-effects (hangover) for which Irn Bru is widely thought to be a sovereign cure.

And it does contain iron – at least as a compound – in the form of ammonium ferric citrate.

Here is their parody of The Snowman, which showcases some iconic Scottish landscape features. It’s just a pity the boy treble doesn’t manage to roll the “r” in Irn enough. (I’m not sure he rolls it at all, in fact.)

Irn Bru: The Snowman