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And Finally
Status Quo’s Rossi backs ice cream vans
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 24 July 2013
Status Quo’s Francis Rossi is backing a campaign to save ice cream vans, which are apparently at risk of disappearing. According to The Sunday People, anyway. Apparently now there are only 5000 vans in the UK, down from 25,000 at their peak, and only 500 of those actually drive around and stop in different places. The humanity!
Anyway, Rossi, whose grandfather founded the Rossi’s ice cream brand in 1932, said: “Ice cream vans were my family’s livelihood and I grew up from the age of two and a half with them around. In the 60s and 70s the ice cream van was a massive part of British life – the van was almost like a place to socialise. It would be so sad if it was something that was consigned to yesteryear so I really hope people can come out, get out of their houses when they hear those chimes and buy some ice cream”.
According to the campaign, a big part of the problem is that these days vans are only allowed to play their ‘ice cream van’ tunes for a few seconds at a time (this was recently raised to twelve seconds, up from four previously), so people don’t realise that they’re there. As a result, they’re not bringing in the kind of money they used to, which might explain the existence of this and this.
