When you’re creating a giant, two-dimensional cup of tea, you encounter the occasional conundrum.

For example – how do you make it steam?

The solution, excitingly, is “aeroplanes”. We wish that was the answer to more of life’s big questions.

Not any old aeroplanes, though. We’re talking about The Blades – a display team of former Red Arrows.

These air aces have had some odd assignments in their time, but our ad ranks pretty highly.

Here’s team leader (also known as Blade 1) Mark Cutmore: “The Yorkshire Tea ad was definitely one of the more unusual briefs that we’ve received but, as we’re the only display team that does what we do, we have been asked to do some quite strange things over the years.

“We were written into the storyline on Emmerdale a few years ago and we’ve also done a stunt for a lunch event where we flew 14 consecutive loops with a passenger in the front seat of one of our planes, holding a mug of tea.”

And the manoeuvre they pull off to get our giant brew steaming is actually just the first part of their signature move.

“The section that you see in the ad of the four aircraft in formation pulling up into the vertical is the beginning of our manoeuvre called ‘The Blades Hammerhead’ where we cut the speed of the aircraft and stall towards each other,” said Mark.

“It’s a really important one to us as it’s our trademark manoeuvre. As far as we’re aware we’re the only display team in the world that does this and, luckily, it was also the perfect manoeuvre to create the steam coming out of the teacup.”

In case you haven’t seen our ad yet, you can take a look at The Blades in action here. And you can find out more about them by visiting their website here.