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The Honda Civic used to be up there with the Austin Allegro in the boring car stakes, though somewhat better made obviously.

We've no idea what the new one is like to drive but agency Wieden and Kennedy has produced another winner of a commercial with a choir recreating the noise made by this unlikely sexy beast of a car. As a way of pepping up the cliched test drive of car past reservoirs, hills and other slugs of country it's ingenious in the extreme. At first it does seem a bit naff but it grows on you and Honda has sensibly given it 60 seconds to do just that.

Will it win another batch of awards for Wieden and Kennedy? Prtobably not as juries are a jealous lot and they'll probably take the view that W&K has won enough.

Big agencies, it would seem, are having trouble recruiting the next generation of CEOs (maybe life was easier when these terribly important people were just managing directors).

A number of factors are being blamed; chiefly the cutbacks in recruitment in the recession of the 90s and the fact that the best talent is more interested in setting up new agencies than working for one of the big networks.

Recruitment remains an issue for agencies and, while they obviously can't afford to employ more people than they need, their recruitment efforts aimed at graduates and the like are pathetic. So few places are on offer that it's hardly a suprise that the best candidates either don't apply or become rapidly cheesed off with instant rejections (annoying if you've just spent hours on an online recruitment process). so recruitment is likely to remain an isse, recession or not.

Tesco has carried all before it for the past few years, becoming the UK's biggest retailer, succeeding in Eastern Europe and making £2 billion or more a year. Its profits have almost become an embarrassment but, as with BP and HSBC, there are worse problems to have.

Its situation has been helped enormously by the own goals at Morrison's and, before that, Sainsbury's where two of its strongest challengers conspired to shoot themselves in the foot. Asda, too, had lost its lustre. These are all on the way back however. It's not the hardest job on earth to run a big British supermarket chain and they're turning up the heat - a bit.

Radio 4's Today Programme is the most prestigious bit of wireless on the air and accordingly allows its presenters a bit of time off to recover from all those early mornings (unlike its Radio 5 equivalent which drags Nicky Campbell out of bed early five days a week, so at least he suffers in the same ratio as his exasperated listeners).

But thus far in 2006 it's been James Naughtie after James Naughtie after James Naughtie. And Jim, as the politicos call him, one suspects to his irritation, has been putting on a good show. Maybe he's been stung by the criticisms by the likes of the Ephraim Hardcastle column in the Mail where Peter McKay keeps reminding him that he's a soft touch. But 'everyday' Jim has been showing a bit of mettle. The other morning he seemed about to lose it completely with nurse Patricia Hewitt, and who can blame him? At this rate he'll be introducing Thought for the Day with 'now here's a bit of pious twaddle from....'

Interpublic's (IPG) decision to sue Sir Frank Lowe for nicking the Tesco account and a few people at the American Arbitration Association ( on this side of the pond arbitration tribunals usually concern themselves with disputes between architects and builders) appears to denote weakness as opposed to strength. Don't they have proper lawyers and courts in the land of litigation?

Frank was bounced from the top table of IPG because the Lowe network never really did transform the IPG offer into something that was highly creative and compelling and he was also involved in the Octagon sports marketing business ( forever characterised by the less than smart decision to buy the UK Brand's Hatch motor racing circuit) which resulted in red faces and write-offs at IPG.

It's Ad Age's agency of the year, it's been Campaign's in the UK for three years now and it's Marketing magazine's too. Game set and match?

An often overlooked fact about BBH is that it's 49 per cent owned by Maurice Levy's Publicis, so it has both independence in operating terms and a grand pere. This has helped the company to grow internationally and also provided it with some of the freedom required to stick to its last: high standards, high ambitions and high prices.

When BBH started in the 80s it looked quite starry but the trio then, Nigel Bogle, John Bartle and john Hegarty, had emerged from the early incarnation in London of TBWA and this, despite its fame for a multi-award winnng Lego commercial which only ran about once, had not been a success. TBWA's success in London came much later under the Omnicom banner.

As everyone waits for 2006 to get going - one thing adland is good at is taking holidays - one thing is reasonably sure, the oldies will be setting the pace.

Who and what accounts will Frank Lowe add to his new agency, what will stop John Hegarty and his partners from taking over the world and how on earth are we going to get by without John Webster?

Webster, who died earlier this week, was, as his former colleague James Best acknowledged, one of adland's few geniuses. As creative director of Boase Massimi Pollitt, the best agency in the world bar none in the 1980s, he was responsible for, among others, the Cadbury's Smash 'Martians', the 'Honey Monster' for Shredded Wheat and the 'Points of view' ad for the Guardian newspaper, in this contributor's view the best TV ad there's been.