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I assume this is an ad from his 'childrens' department, trying to persuade kids that science and maths isn't terminally boring.

It's not great but at least it doesn't depict children as feral creatures who should be put into luminous coats on one of Jack Straw's chain gangs:

And it's good to see one of London's few remaining independent ad agencies winning a big account.

Stella Artois, the brand that was marketed as 'reassuringly expensive' even though supermarkets were giving it away for years, has been directionless for a while now.

Former agency Lowe produced some great ads but, in the end, disappeared up their own rear end as the advertising proposition escaped the brand reality.

Mother isn't as hot as it was a few years ago but that may be because it's grown up a bit.

Blimey, I didn't know that there were 200,000 jobs in media.

But according to researcher Claire Enders there are currently 400,000 and half of these will be gone in five years as local newspapers and magazines hit the buffers.

Sales jobs will be hardest-hit as ad volumes drop alarmingly and jobs get taken over by new automated techniques from the likes of Google.

It certainly looks as though we might be on the last lap for many newspapers as car and property ads in particular either disappear or migrate to the internet.

Versions of Leonard Cohen's classic Hallelujah will be falling like leaves from your Christmas tree this year. Here's the great John Cale from the soundtrack of Shrek:

**The Red Brick Road agency signed up veteran hoofer Des O'Connor to front this year's Tesco Christmas campaign, a bit cheaper than the Spice Girls one supposes.

Des is known for his on-screen good humour, having partly made his reputation by being sent up by Morecambe and Wise (in real life he's a bit more, er, show business).

It's not bad, showing Des dodging Tesco price balloons as he tries to do his Bing Crosby, chestnuts roasting on an open fire routine.

But it doesn't really zing. And isn't all that chestnuts stuff just too old hat by now, even when you send it up?

A while ago Trevor Beattie's agency Beattie McGuinness Bungay looked as though it was going to be bought by Omnicom.

That deal fell through over price but now it looks as though the three boys are set for a Christmas bonus anyway as Bruce Haines, formerly boss of Leo Burnett and now working for South Korean group Cheil, is in the final stages of a deal to buy some sort of stake in BMB.

BMB has had a good year winning Dutch bank ING, Freeview and Thomson Holidays and must be one of contenders for Campaign's Agency of the Year gong, although it's hard to think of any outstanding creative work.

Robert Lerwill, CEO of multinational media buying and market research group Aegis (which owns Carat) is leaving in a hurry and chairman John Napier (not a media man) is taking over.

Lerwill learned his trade as a second in command to cosmic bean counter Martin Sorrell at WPP and has since built up Aegis (which also owns research company Synovate) to become a real force in the market.

So it's a bid odd that he's going.

Now Aegis is either going to fall off a cliff or Napier and the board want to do a deal that Lerwill doesn't agree with.

People have always speculated about the secret Coca-Cola recipe (it's coke, innit?) and Rio de Janeiro agency Santo has turned it into a brilliant commercial:

Interestingly Red Bull proudly announces that it's got coca leaf in its new cola.

And here's a boy who's done quite well for himself, from media director of Leo Burnett in London to head of Interpublic's Mediabrands, its attempt to make media the key partner for clients.

In between he was briefly MD of the whole Leo Burnett agency in London, a job which confounded him as much as everyone else who tried to do it, before abandoning Omnicom for IPG.

Speaking at Ad Age's Media Mavens (top dogs in media) awards fest Brien outlines the near future and what he says make sense.

In particular he reminds his audience that the word marketing is derived from the French 'marche' (ie a market in the middle of your village or the verb 'to sell'), and that's what agencies should be helping their clients do.

I don't know about you but I quite like the Independent, the paper founded on the back of the City boys' boom of the I980s by three rather stuffy refugees from the Daily Telegraph.

It's never made any money - but neither has The Times or Guardian in that long period - but has done some good things in its time (launching the Independent on Sunday with a stand-alone staff wasn't one of them, whatever Stephen Glover says in his marvelous book Paper Dreams).

Now owned by Tony O'Reilly's Independent News and Media it looks a bit of a lost cause. As new editor Roger Alton, formerly of the Observer, admits.