PG Tips

The PG Tips chimpanzee ads (UK, 1956 to 2002) The grandparent of every comic mascot campaign. For more than four decades, chimps in human clothes played the "Tipps family," with actors supplying their voices, sending up whatever British family life looked like that year. The best-remembered moment is the 1988 piano-moving sketch, with its deadpan punchline about a piano sitting on someone's foot. The joke outlived its moment: the last Tipps family ad aired in January 2002, replaced by claymation birds. PG Tips later found a second long run with Johnny Vegas and a knitted Monkey from 2007, proof that the brand never stopped believing tea sells best with a straight face and a silly partner.