Beachy Head Christmas Jumper: the worst beer name ever?

I'm happy to defend the use of humour in beer names. I've written about it before. Humour is shaped by our character, psyche and values so that which one person finds funny, another finds offensive.

But even I struggle to understand why the Beachy Head Brewery would name a beer Christmas Jumper.

For those of you who don't know the backstory, Beachy Head cliff in Southern England notorious as a suicide spot as there's a five hundred foot drop to the beach. A chaplaincy team regularly patrol the clifftop, reaching out to those who may seek to take their own life by jumping.

And Beachy Head Brewery have been selling a beer called Christmas Jumper for the last three years.

Head Brewer Roger Green is quoted in The Argus as saying, "This started with a pump clip showing Father Christmas in a big fluffy jumper but when we produced labels that did not reproduce because we have a standard shot on our labels. It was purely a running joke on the famous woolly jumper. (The link to Beachy Head) was unintentional certainly. We know this is a very delicate subject and have the utmost respect for the job the chaplains do."

If the link to Beachy Head was 'unintentional' - by a brewery run by the Davis-Gilbert estate which also runs a pub, accomodation and farming on the Head - then it makes the brewery staggeringly naive.

I think it's the most egregious piece of beer marketing I've seen in years.

The story finds a sharp focus this year in the national press, perhaps because of a high-profile suicide last week. Given that the Davies-Gilbert family make their living out of Beachy Head, they ought to show some respect; at least re-name the beer and make a sizeable donation to the Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team.

Humour can be found in the most unlikely of places. I just don't think it can be found in the grief of those who took their own lives on Beachy Head.

7 comments:

  1. Yes, I broadly agree with your points Scoopie. I'm not bothered at all by 'fnarr fnarr' beer names but this pushes things a bit too far for me.

    However, what has alarmed me today is the news that American former pop moppets Hanson intend to market a beer called Mmmmhop IPA. They must be stopped...

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  2. I don't see owt wrong. I doubt whether the suicides give a rat's ass about it. In fact if people came on my land to do that I'd think they were twats and treat them accordingly. :)

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  3. I fail to see a problem. Most of the best humour nowadays is the kind you get in text messages a few hours after some "tragedy".

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  4. We couldn't help having a chuckle about the story - but it seems the perpetually-offended and their 'rights' to be so have once again trampled on those of the rest of us.

    Insensitive? Possibly. Funny? We had a chuckle anyway - but in our view that wasn't at the expense of the victims of suicide.

    Some perspective please.

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  5. I don't like it. It's just mis-judged, that's all. Just bad taste; and gives the brewer a bad name, regardless of the quality of the beer (see also BrewDog's Nazi beer)

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  6. Obviously they are not worried about causing offence, if they have been selling it for 3 years now. If they were they would have renamed it after the first run.

    Personally, its a little bit to bad taste for me.

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  7. Yes, it's about failure.

    Some fail to understand how others feel so offended.

    I fail to understand how anyone could not be appalled by this.

    If others don't want to understand why I find it offensive, that's your life. Go live it in ignorance.

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