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Shirley Bassey is said to be 72 (though I reckon she must be a bit older than that) but she remains a fantastic singer.

But what a shame that she never sang any really good songs, like Aretha's 'Respect' or 'Say a Little Prayer.' Anyway here she is, from the 1960s by the looks of it:

Which used to be the great Boase Massimi Pollitt of course. But for once a takeover doesn't seem to have diluted the original that much.

Mind you, life would would still be better with BMP, CDP, the original Saatchis and GGT.

Anyway, this is a perky ad that only an agency at the top of its game can pull off.

Rob Van Pooss, latterly sales director of a bunch of commercial radio stations in Essex, was a throwback to the days when commercial radio looked liked being a big thing.

There was Capital and LBC in London and a whole load of other regional stations like BMRB in Birmingham and Radio City in Liverpool which had a brief and startling effect on the UK's media consumption.

John Whitney at Capital, Terry Smith in Liverpool and Jimmy Gordon up in Scotland were figures to be reckoned with.

But, somehow or other, it never quite happened. Some blame it on the BBC, others on the Government; maybe they just weren't good enough.

Usually when there's a big media review called the agencies concerned respond with a mixture of optimism and fear.

Unlike creative agency reviews, media agencies often keep the business as the numbers they use and the deals they can negotiate are pretty similar.

Unilever, one of the world's biggest advertisers is reviewing its
global media account, £5bn no less.

At the moment it uses agencies from WPP, Omnicom and Interpublic, with WPP's MindShare in the UK driving seat. So, in the normal course of events, all three biggies would fancy their chances of gaining some business. At worst they wouldn't be fired altogether.

It's the only one that hasn't been bailed out by the US government and it's going great under former Boeing boss Alan Mulally.

Even with bizarre ads like this?

Clients have had the squeeze on budgets for decades of course but now it's being openly acknowledged. Even WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell has spoken publicly of it, which is a tacit admission that he doesn't know what to do about it.

Now State Farm, a big US insurer and allegedly DDB Chicago's most pofitable account, is taking the shears to the agency's margins, following in the footsteps of McDonald's and Anheuser-Busch.

What are agencies to do?

Fees are a matter of supply and demand of course and the facts are that there are too many agencies chasing too little quality business.

We’ve been reading that Simon Cowell’s chum Sir Philip Green has been acting as his unofficial manager and rag trade scuffler Green seems to have worked his magic by upping Cowell’s American Idol pay check from £22m to £88m. That’s £88m a year.

Green and Cowell are supposed to be setting up an entertainment business together. But why bother when you can rake in this sort of money for appearing on a talent show?

Mind you, it's easy to see why a few good shows (could be a film with Jack Nicholson as a producer!) mean so much.

Back in blighty, ITV's all-day audience share fell to just 16 per cent last week, 13 per cent among us ABC1s, in the absence of Britain's Got Talent (another Cowell vehicle) and any decent sport.

That Levi's remains in the fashion game after 150 years is pretty remarkable but it seems to be becoming enough more of a battle in these days of pricey fashion jeans.

It's surely only a matter before someone radical on Savile Row starts making bespoke jeans, at the usual price Sir.

Anyway, Levi's has moved its US account from Bartle Bogle Hegarty (which has handled all of Levi's pretty much since it was founded in the 1980s) to Wieden & Kennedy.

This is a taster of its 'Go Forth' campaign which is supposed to refer back to Walt Whitman I think (not very good on old Walt I'm afraid).

Air New Zealand that is, which fields these enthusiastic souls to make us listen to the safety video:

"Right chaps, here's what we want. It's our 250th anniversary so we want to celebrate that with a global campaign. And sell more Guinness of course."

So you get a wanky ad that pleases the client and leaves customers cold and weary.

Well this opus from Saatchi and Saatchi for Guinness is better than that.

Although it's one in a series from Guinness and other advertisers (Abbott Mead Vickers' 'domino' ad for the Oirish stout was another) which seem to think that 'global' campaigns aimed at YouTube have to have thousands of implausibly excited consumers in them.