Lloyds boss Daniels snubs the Beeb - what is it with these bosses?

Lloyds Bank CEO Eric Daniels' biggest shareholder is the public, you and me (and lots of others) own 41 per cent of it but the 'quiet American' (he's from Montana) adamantly refuses to talk to the BBC.

Even when they pursue him down the street .

Today the bank, which hit the buffers when it bought Halifax Bank of Scotland at the height of the banking crisis, announced that it will turn a profit this year, rather good news that Eric might have wished to share.

The Beeb, of course, would have asked Daniels about bonuses (which aren't really an issue at Lloyds) and then promptly lost interest.

Specsavers goes it alone with hordes of Lynx-type totty

Optician Specsavers is doing its best to take over the world (or at least your local high street) and it's going for broke with this expensive number parodying Lynx.

And like a lot of advertisers these days it's going for the DIY approach, with the copy written in house before being sent off to an expensive commercials director, in this case Danny Kleinman.

Man I couldn't remember (Jerry Buhlmann) is made CEO of Aegis!

A couple of days ago we wrote about Mark Craze, one time supremo of Carat in the UK, reaching 50 and also his disappointment at being overlooked for the job of Carat boss in northern Europe.

That job went to one Jerry Buhlmann, who had been at a small media agency called BBJ before joining Carat, and whose name I forgot when writing about Craze.

Anyway Jerry has emerged as CEO of Aegis, the holding company for Carat and market research offshoot Synovate, after presumably impressing as CEO of Aegis Media (Carat to you and me, can't think why they bother to call the PLC Aegis).

Here's a good idea for a game show - real torture in The Game of Death

It's only a matter of time before someone - ITV, Sky? - has a go at this, a game show featuring real torture from contestants applying 'near fatal' electric shocks to each other.

French station France 2 put on The Game of Death on Wednesday night, allegedly to explore how far idiots would go if a TV presenter so instructed them.

And they went a long, long way.

Who would you have on your game of death? Katie Price? Les Dennis? Lord Ashcroft? Former US deputy president and waterboarding fan Dick Cheney would be a good one.

McDonald's celebrates St Patrick's Day with a revolting green tide

Or St Patty's Day as they seem to call it in Chicago, which seems a bit familiar.

Anyway McDonald's and agency Leo Burnett produced a giant shamrock, a green river and a giant up-ended cup to celebrate yesterday's event - creating what looks rather like a giant mess.

Probably looked good on paper......

Npower to sponsor Football League - but do these stunts get unpopular energy companies anywhere?

Npower, one of the gaggle of mostly foreign-owned energy companies that have charged British consumers through the nose for gas and electricity ever since this market was privatised, has emerged as the new sponsor of the Football League .

Just at the time that one of its equally continental and even more unpopular rivals E.On has given up its sponsorship of the FA Cup, realising, no doubt, that a bit of corporate hospitality dressed up as supporting Britain' favourite pastime doesn't get you very far.

BA's Willie Walsh takes to YouTube - when can we expect a video from Unite's Charlie Whelan?

So here we have British Airways CEO Willie Walsh being all sweet and reasonable about the imminent strike that's going to muck up lots of people's travel (Willie wants to reduce cabin crew numbers and cut pay and benefits for new entrants):

Marie Claire buffs up for Naked Week

It must be the time of year (a rather belated spring in the UK) but nudity seems to be all over the place.

BBDO in Johannesburg has produced this rather fetching campaign for Marie Claire's Naked Week in which celebs strip off in aid of good causes.

Actually I'm becoming more and more sceptical about the trend for celebs to strip for charity, not least because, in the wake of Calendar Girls, it seems to have spread to the population at large. Even some ad agencies, as Mediacom and VCCP have demonstated (in their highly airbrushed way) recently.

Apple to Germans - when it comes to Apps, keep your kit on

Apple is not noted for being a particularly prudish company (as far as I know) but it's having a problem or two with the Germans, always keen to get their kit off at any opportunity.

According to some German iPhone App providers the computer firm is censoring content even stuff that is not particulary titillating, let alone pornographic.

German photographer Sebastian Kempa says his App featuring 'ordinary' people clothed and unclothed has been censored by Apple even though, mindful of the computer giant's views, he changed it to Not Quite Naked People.

Agencies are staffing up says Ad Age - so is the ad recession over?

Well it might be in some places (and there probably hasn't been one in some Far Eastern markets) but the US is likely to see a recovery before the UK.

For a start the business is much bigger there and the larger agencies still maintain substantial operations in most of the major centres, certainly New York, Chicago and somewhere on the West Coast whereas the days when the big London agencies thought they needed to be represented outside the capital are long gone.

Even Sir Martin Sorrell admitted the other day that WPP was hiring again after ditching 14,000 jobs in the recession, following an experience he compared to "staring into the abyss."