The milk of human kindness

One of David Cameron’s choices on Desert Island Discs, this book reminds us, was ‘Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)’. The book does not, however, explain why Cameron chose the Benny Hill ditty. Consulting the online archive, I found the then leader of the opposition explaining that ‘when you’re asked to sing a song’, ‘Ernie’ was the only one to which he could remember all the words. Sue Lawley tested him, and Cameron responded: ‘You can hear the hoof beats pound as they race across the ground, the clatter of the wheels as they span round and round’. It’s a miracle the Notting Hill Set was ever seen as smart.And yet I know what Cameron means.

For our generation milkmen are an exercise in nostalgia. It seems incredible that a novelty song about one could reach the top of the charts, but then it seems incredible that the job existed in the first place.