THE BOVRIL sign that was once a landmark for 30 years at the Ludgate Circus entrance to Fleet Street, was as famous the newspapers so many of us worked for. And like the iconic Daily Express building had its own story to tell as it became part of our history.

 

For over the centuries, the beef mix the British people are so fond of today, carved a place as deep as a butcher’s axe in their hearts and most of us have nostalgic memories of it.

 

We can all remember the legendary Bovril ads when young, can’t we? But the company’s advertising campaign took off when giant Bovril signs like the one on Fleet Street came on the scene. They became landmarks.

 

And it’s all thanks to three men who made history themselves: a Scottish butcher; a Fleet Street advertising director and Napoleon.

 

John Johnston studied in Edinburgh and was interested in food sciences, particularly preserving meat to last longer. His uncle was a butcher.

Samuel Benson was a Fleet Street ad executive and Napoleon Bonaparte, well, we know all about him.

 

Johnston decided to ignore his father’s wishes for a legal or medical career, and take an apprenticeship with his uncle, also named John, the butcher.

Eventually, he took over his shop in Edinburgh and decided to use the large quantity of beef trimmings produced in the cutting process to make his own glace de viande (beef glaze or stock). He heated it until it became dark brown and almost hard, giving it a long shelf-life. It sold so well that he opened a second shop and a factory in the Holyrood area.

 

In 1871, he emigrated to Canada where the French Army awarded him a contract to supply Napoleon’s hungry soldiers with one million cans of preserved beef products, during the Franco-Prussian war, developing a substance called Johnston's Fluid Beef (or Bovril).

 

The British Government couldn’t help at the time, even though it was sort of friendly with Napoleon.

 

The first part of the product's name came from the Latin bovīnus, meaning an ox. Johnston took the -vril suffix from a popular novel, The Coming Race, about a superior breed of people, the Vril-ya, who derived their powers from an electromagnetic substance named "Vril".

 

He wanted Napoleon’s men to know they could obtain great strength from it. So, Bovril became a superfood. Napoleon was so pleased with him, he awarded Johnston the Order of the French Red Cross.

 

Later, his factory burned down in Canada but by now he was extremely rich, and he went to England where he built Bovril Castle in West Dulwich, partly from Napoleon’s money. In 1889 the Bovril business in Britain was floated and became a public company.

 

When he died aboard his yacht White Ladye in Cannes, his body was brought back to England and interred in a large mausoleum in West Norwood Cemetery where it is today.

 

Meanwhile, the Bovril adverts were popular with the British public in the early 1900s. One even depicted Pope Leo XIII seated on his throne, with a mug of Bovril. The campaign slogan read: The Two Infallible Powers – The Pope & Bovril.

 

Bovril beef tea was the only hot drink that Ernest Shackleton’s team had when they were marooned on Elephant Island during the 1914–1917 Endurance Expedition.

 

The Bovril Company made sure it always associated itself with the military and patriotism during all our wars. In1916, it ran a full-page advertisement in the Daily Express showing a bull proclaiming: “If you can’t go war yourself you might want to send ME—I hear they want more BOVRIL at the Front?”

 

But one ad man had another idea — to turn the advert into a huge street sign so no one could miss it. It would just say the word Bovril!

 

Ad manager Samuel Benson had been with the Bovril company three years when he was asked by the chairman to set himself up in Fleet Street as an independent advertising agent at the company’s cost, and to specifically handle the Bovril account, apparently this would work better with the tax man. He jumped at the chance and never looked back. He moved into 100 Fleet Street (the Punch Tavern today) and expanded the firm’s huge nationwide billings by more than forty. 

 

Fleet Street and Picadilly were the first sites, and both became landmarks. He also acquired other accounts, such as Guinness and Schweppes, creating the same massive signs for them.

 

In 1909 Bensons expanded to a new office building in Kingsway, London and became Fleet Street’s leading ad agency with long-running campaigns for Guinness; Maclean’s; Andrews Liver Salts;’ Rowntree’s Chocolate; Lipton’s Tea and Colman’s Mustard among others. It had over 100 staff.

 

Samuel Benson died after being hit by a motor bus in Fleet Street in 1914.

Ogilvy & Mather acquired S.H. Benson Ltd in 1971, forming Ogilvy Benson & Mather Ltd. The Benson name was eventually dropped, and the London agency became Ogilvy & Mather Ltd.

 

WHEN CHRISTIANSEN TURNED TO ARSENIC

Christiansen fought Beaver stress

JUST read a fascinating story about legendary Express editor Arthur Christiansen, sometime before the Second World War, who could be very highly strung and sometimes suffered from nerves and depression.

 

One morning, Beaverbrook, who rang him every day, came on the telephone over an article that implied Mussolini was a murderer. “Do you not think that is insulting and damaging to the head of a friendly state?” he said. Christiansen did not.

 

“Then read the article again and call me back!” the chairman growled.

Christiansen read the piece again, rang back and stood his ground. He didn’t agree.

 

“Read it again!” the Chairman ordered, this time in a menacing tone.

 

Christiansen, up against the clock on newspaper production, went over it again but still didn’t find the piece offensive. He rang back and said so.

Beaverbrook’s reply was the same, telling him to read it yet again and it lit a fuse in the editor who was bogged down with other problems.

 

“I snapped,” Christiansen said later, “and I bellowed back — ‘leave me alone for God’s sake!’ — then I banged down the receiver.”

 

During this frosty period in his career, the pressure grew on Christiansen, because of these calls, and he went to see the boss at his London home, Stornoway House “with a real attack of the jitters.”

 

Christiansen said: “He asked me how old I was, and I said 30. He said he too had suffered from exhaustion at that age. But nerve storms were a weakness of youth. As I grew older, I would learn to harness them. Would I like to rest from editorship until I felt fit again? If so, I could change places with the editor in Glasgow for a while?

 

“From the look in his eye, it was clear that once I gave up my chair, I would never get it back. I said I would think it over.”

 

Back in the office Christiansen rang a Harley Street friend who told him he could administer a drastic remedy if he called on him each day after his patients at two minutes past three o’clock.

 

The editor said: “I did and every day for 12 days he injected me with a preparation of strychnine, iron and arsenic. The effect was startling. My confidence came back. I returned to battle. The doctor died soon afterwards and never again was I able to find one willing to oblige me with these injections.”

 

FLEET STREET QUIZ

Who first called the Express building the Black Lubyanka?

 

What did Kelvin MacKenzie used to shout out at Editor Arthur Firth when he walked through the editorial?

 

Why were copy spikes generally banned in Fleet Street?

 

1. Private Eye dubbed the iconic, 1930s art-deco glass building the Black Lubyanka because of its similarity to the internal politics of Russia’s KGB torture centre.

 

2. Kelvin would shout across the floor: “Arthur Percy Firth, you are hereby accused of impersonating an editor, taking this once great newspaper and reducing it to a daily pile of crap. How do you plead?” Arthur just laughed.

 

3. Spikes were generally banned after Larry Lamb was doing a news subbing shift on the Daily Mail. A heavy smoker he bent down to get a cigarette from his bottom drawer and impaled his forehead on his metal copy spike. Blood spattered across the subs table and the spike had to be sawn off in the office. He was taken to hospital where the tip was removed. After that copy baskets were used.

 

TERRY MANNERS

 

17 February 2025