Ageing Guardian

The Guardian’s Steve Bell has a very strange cartoon in today’s edition. 

It depicts Mervyn King and Alistair Darling shaking bottles of Pepsi-cola over a grave marked “The British Economy RIP”.   Darling is saying: “Where am I? What are we doing?”, while King is singing: “Come Alive! Come Alive!”

Come alive! was a successful advertising slogan for Pepsi.  But they stopped using it as long ago as 1967. 

So what are we to conclude when the Guardian’s cartoonist makes an arch reference that will be understood only by people well over the age of 50?  Something about the age profile of the paper’s readership?