The Make Mine Milk campaign is bringing back the iconic Milk Race for the first time in 20 years. The cycling event will be held in Nottingham on 26 May.

The original Milk Race was sponsored by the now-defunct Milk Marketing Board, and ran for 35 years between 1958 and 1993.

The original competition was open to amateur cyclists until 1985, when professionals were permitted to compete.

At the height of its popularity, the race inspired a computer game for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, among others.

From 1987, a rival competition sponsored by Kellogg’s – the Kellogg’s Tour – was open for professional riders only.

The Milk Race ended in 1993 when the Milk Marketing Board lost most of its powers following the introduction of European anti-monopoly laws and the deregulation of the milk market.

The board’s processing arm, Dairy Crest (founded in 1981), survives to this day, having been privatised in 1996.

The Kellogg’s Tour ended in 1994 and – aside from the Pru Tour in 1998-9 - British cycling didn’t get another major event until the founding of the Tour of Britain in 2004.

The Dairy Council and the Milk Marketing Forum, which have run the Make Mine Milk generic marketing campaign since 2010, now want the revived Milk Race to become a fixture of the sporting calendar (they’re also banking on the interest in British cycling generated by last year’s Team GB success, not to mention Sir Bradley Wiggins’ Tour de France victory).

The new Milk Race is slated for the next two years, and the organisers are hoping that funding can be secured from farmers and dairy bodies to keep it going.

The Make Mine Milk campaign is famous for enlisting celebrities to wear a ‘milk moustache’ in its marketing. Past figures include Rupert Grint, Vinnie Jones and Gordon Ramsay. Pop singer Amelia Lily was recently announced as the latest face of the campaign.

The campaign’s backers say that it has helped changed attitudes to milk since it launched in 2010. Perceptions of milk being ‘cool’ were 10% higher among people who were aware of the Make Mine Milk campaign, according to figures by independent research company Researchcraft, while claimed usage of milk was 18% higher.

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