Rob Wilson
speaker
31 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Rob Wilson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
So we've got quite a unique bottle and we've gone down the kind of decanter presentation and actually put an image in the bottle. When we first did it, it was quite a unique concept of having an image kind of floating within the liquid behind the glass.
We love that image of looking into the bottle. You'll see as well, within our bottle, we talk about the synergy of looking back and looking forward, so every single...
Our gin is about honouring veterans, kind of past and present, and we're kind of disconnecting away from the loss and the sacrifice that took place in the First World War. About a million British Empire soldiers died in the First World War, and about half have no known grave. And we've got 2,500 tacks, that's matched to the resource that we can put into it.
2,500 tags of real people, real dads, real uncles, real sweethearts, real people that paid the supreme sacrifice. And I think it's really important for the very first time, open your bottle and make a toast to the person named on the dog tag. And then momentarily, that person's back in the room.
Proceeds of this gin that you buy today will go and support modern-day veterans who are commonly left behind, commonly face struggle and hardship, which doesn't sit well with me at all. So we want to make a practical difference to the lives of... of those that are experiencing difficulties.
So many, so many struck a chord with me. You know, as a Scots Guardsman, obviously, I instantly identify with your own, you know, and anyone who's been in the household division. However... You know, stories that stand out for me, 68-year-old Lieutenant Henry Webber, who was the oldest person to die on the Somme.
He was a teacher at Tombridge School, but just didn't want to miss out on playing his part. A 15-year-old who lied about his age in order to join his friends at the front and send money back to his mother, who was really, really struggling. Three brothers of the Australian Infantry who died on the same day in Passchendaele in 1917.
A unique dog tag in a sense that it's one of the few bottles that will have more than one dog tag on it. We've got a father and son, a Lieutenant Colonel Morehouse, a Captain Morehouse, again died on the same day within kind of sight of each other. So really, really kind of poignant and incredible stories from people that just gave their all. Battle of the Somme, 1st of July 1916.
60,000 casualties on the first day, 20,000 dead.
Absolutely. And, you know, generations of men kind of wiped out, really. And we want to keep these names kind of alive. We're really good at remembrance in this country for about a week. And then we switch it off again through the gin. We want to keep this spirit alive throughout the year because...
You know, it's a huge sacrifice that's kind of come before us and it's really important to keep that on at all times, I think.
I was really keen on doing something charity kind of focused and... I love gin and I just thought it was really odd that there was no representation of the military, of our armed forces within that really, really busy gin space. A quarter of the population last year bought gin. It's an incredible gin.
You upgrade your gin experience through this so you're not compromising on quality in order to support something. You're actually upgrading your gin experience but at the same time, You're honouring a really special group of people. This whole thing's a voluntary campaign. It's all profit goes out the other side through our community interest company. So it's a registered CIC company.
Every penny of profit that comes from a bottle or a glass of gin comes out the other side. Now, what does that mean? In the past, we've worked with a bigger military charity to send funds into a quick reaction fund. The danger with the bigger charities is that sometimes the individuals on the ground can get lost.
So we keep some back so when we hear a hardship story, we can kind of move really quickly. We will pay for a veteran networking breakfast, which is amazing. You know, 60 veterans in a room. So much positive can come from that kind of experience. Last month, the gin paid for some PPE for a veteran who really wanted to attend a training course, but he couldn't afford the PPE to do it.
We did a one-off grocery shop for a former Royal Marine last month as well. So I'm just really, really struggling with that cost of living crisis. So working with some mainstream charities within their quick reaction funds, but also actually kind of having the ability to If we hear a story, if we hear any local hardship stories, we can strike kind of really, really quickly.
So everything's going through and has that has that practical action.
Yeah, we've done that. We've done that. And that's amazing. You know, you have a 19 year old former Royal Marine opposite a D-Day veteran. It's amazing. Only good comes from that kind of.
experience whether it's someone looking for for work or someone needs some help with a contact we want to do more the more we sell the more we can do the gary baldy in in red hill call it the win-win gin because that's what it is it's providing a really high quality kind of gin experience, but equally supporting an incredible cause through practical action.
Like a military person might be. It is. It's really strong. It is solid. It's kind of robust and rigid. And yeah, there's some overlaps there with kind of military language as well.
Showing 1–20 of 31 · page 1 of 2
Next →