This 90s Promo Video For London City Airport Is Hilarious

Will Noble
By Will Noble Last edited 89 months ago
This 90s Promo Video For London City Airport Is Hilarious

A 1993 promo VHS for London City Airport was discovered in the attic of air traffic engineer Vic Abbott in May 2016 — and it's aged about as well as a bottle of Lambrini Cherry.

With a sinister steel guitar that heavily implies someone will be murdered inside the next eight minutes, we meet half businesswomen, half shoulder pad Elizabeth James. She is "someone who is in a hurry, but wants air travel to be the best", and has a 9.15am at Fleet Street — presumably with her pearl merchant.

Winning: Elizabeth James

Thank the lord, then, that Elizabeth's flight from Zurich — piloted by German comedian Henning Wehn — is landing at City Airport. But then, Elizabeth is no idiot. She voted for Thatcher three times.

Cut to Ol' Gil blueprint Geoffrey Campbell, a man whose suitcase almost certainly contains nothing but a blunt HB pencil and a Ginsters sausage roll. "It's important that Geoffrey gets to his meeting," smarms the narrator, which is why he's given himself exactly one hour to get from Heathrow to central London in rush hour traffic.

The wailing harmonica solo (which might as well be going wah-wah-wah) doesn't bode well for poor Geoff, and indeed, as Liz glides into City Airport to the strains of Mozart and signs something important with a gold pen, her hapless counterpart throws a hissy on the Westway, misses his meeting, and slopes off into obscurity.

Incompetent: Geoff Campbell

"Next time Geoffrey will go the RIGHT way," warns the voiceover artist, who must have made a packet on school Geography videos back in the day.

From here on in, Gary Moore from Thin Lizzy does a three-minute guitar solo over shots of more people who voted Thatcher, as they breeze through checkout, sink screwdrivers and update their Filofaxes with fox hunting meets.  

For all our snarkiness, City Airport is a pretty handy little place, if you can afford it.

Last Updated 11 October 2016