There aren’t a lot of things that make me laugh out loud; I’m more of a smile guy.

But one thing that does make me laugh out loud is Shan Micallef’s character of Milo Kerrigan. The imbecilic and unintelligible ex-boxer became a cult figure on Australian TV’s Full Frontal (something you can gather from watching clips on YouTube – every time the character enters the set, the studio audience go crazy).

This car ad featured above must have been the first time I saw Milo. I’d recorded the show and can remember rewinding the tape (yep, we’re talking VCR era here) numerous times and laughing over and over again. And when I found it on YouTube yesterday I did exactly the same thing – watched it repeatedly and laughed.

Now allow me to get to the beer connection. The Illawarra Brewing Company’s latest seasonal is a brown ale called the Brownish Bomber, which is the boxing nickname of Milo Kerrigan. I assume the name is also a reference to the fact that, in beer style categories, it’s not a true brown ale. I spoke to brewer Shaun Blissett last week and he said in US beer competitions there are strict parameters for a brown ale. Go outside them and you’re lumped into the Texas Brown Ale category with all the other brownish ales.

That’s fine by me because the Brownish Bomber – and HopDog’s recent Shouty Man (another “Texas Brown Ale”) are making me reassess my dislike of brown ales. I picked up a growler of the Bomber during the week and fully intended to take some notes while drinking a glass of it. But I failed in that effort. Six times. In one night. I can tell you that there’s strong malty notes upfront with new El Dorado hops setting up camp in the middle and lingering through to the end.

But perhaps the fact I knocked back the growler so quickly as good a recommendation as any – that the Brownish Bomber is so good you can’t stop at just one glass. I was just relieved I wasn’t talking like Milo by the end of the growler.