ABINGDON’S most famous beer has celebrated its 30th birthday.

Old Speckled Hen was created at Morland Brewery in 1979 to celebrate MG’s 50th anniversary of car production in the town.

The brewery and MG factory are both long closed, but key figures behind the beer’s creation met yesterday in the town where it was created to toast its success.

Former MG manager Tony Gaye, 77, recalled how, while trying to think of a name for the beer, an employee found a photo of an MG Featherlight Saloon left speckled by an experimental paint job in 1927.

For decades, it had shuttled workers around the factory, earning the nickname “the owd speckl’d un”.

Mr Mellor, 74, who helped brew the beer, said it tasted as good as ever. It is now brewed by Greene King in Bury St Edmunds.