Story Line
The lyric's story line is inspired by Hill's early experience as a milkman for Hann's Dairies in Eastleigh, Hampshire. Market Street mentioned in the lyrics is an actual road in Eastleigh. The song tells the fictional exploits of Ernie Price, a 52-year-old (68 in the original TV version) milkman who drives a horse-drawn milk cart. It relates his war with the bread-delivery man ("Two-Ton Ted from Teddington") and their efforts to win the heart of Sue, a widow who lives on her own at number 22, Linley Lane.
In the end the two men fight with the wares they carry on their carts, and Ernie is killed by a rock cake underneath his heart followed by a stale pork pie in his eye (a fresh meat pie in the original TV version).
Sue and Ted then marry, but Ernie's ghost returns to haunt them on their wedding night.
Read more about this topic: Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)
Famous quotes containing the words story and/or line:
“Out of countless memories, invention selects a few that become “the story of my life.””
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“I fear I agree with your friend in not liking all sermons. Some of them, one has to confess, are rubbish: but then I release my attention from the preacher, and go ahead in any line of thought he may have started: and his after-eloquence acts as a kind of accompaniment—like music while one is reading poetry, which often, to me, adds to the effect.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)