Viva Brighton Issue #68 October 2018

INTERVIEW
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MYbrighton: Jerry Hallam
Milkman at Brighton Milk
Are you local? I’m from Nottingham, but
I’ve lived all over the country. I came to
Brighton to study Environmental Impact
Assessment but I graduated in the middle
of the 90s recession and nobody cared
about the environment. There were no
jobs so I went to Bevendean Farm and
asked for some work. They said I was too
qualified and wouldn’t stay but they took
me on as a milkman. That was in 1990.
How big is your round? My first
round was just three or four roads in
Moulsecoomb and at my busiest I had
over 800 daily customers. It was manic.
Now I have 460 customers a week and
deliver to Coldean, Moulsecoomb,
Woodingdean, Ovingdean, Bevendean,
Queens Park, North Laine, Preston
Park and Surrenden Road… I’ll deliver
anywhere in Brighton. On my busiest day
it’s an 80-mile round trip. With running
up and down to the houses, I’ll walk
around 26 miles. That’s a marathon!
Is business good? Definitely. My
rounds have gone up by a third in the
past four months. It began when David
Attenborough was on the TV with Blue
Planet, talking about plastic waste. It
went mad. That and the cold weather.
Every day I was getting new calls. I went
to the Ovingdean Green Festival with a
couple of crates and picked up another
20 calls. With customers wanting to be
greener, business is really picking up.
I’m delivering over 4,000 pints in glass
bottles each week.
Is the milk from local cows? I go up
to Burgess Hill because there aren’t any
Brighton dairies that do glass anymore.
I leave home at 11.30 at night and join
a huge queue at the dairy. 60 rounds go
out from there. I’ll get away from there
at 2am.
What do you like most about Brighton?
Looking over Brighton at half past three
or four o’clock in the morning at very first
light, it’s just lovely. Especially in summer.
Winter’s not so nice but when you make
the round, you’re a hero. I’ve got snow
chains and it’s lovely being the first one to
drive through the pristine snow.
When I start my round there’s no one up
until about 5am when you get the first
few cars. Until then all you can hear is
the wildlife. At 6.30 it goes mad with rush
hour traffic. I rarely come to Brighton in
the day time. I try to get everything done
by 7am and then I go home to bed.
Where would you live if you didn’t
live here? Probably in Spain. Port de
Pollença, in the north of Mallorca. I go
there when I want to rest but I haven’t
taken any time off for the past couple of
years. It’s hard to find a relief milkman to
take the round. But I do get a couple of
days off at Christmas.
Interview by Lizzie Lower
brightonmilk.com / 07977 477573
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