How old is Tim Westwood?

Westwood has surely got to be a strong contender for the most irritating person in the UK. Perfect, therefore, to be the face of a Radio 1 ad campaign to promote financial awareness among ‘youth'.

According to the accompanying puff, the online video, created by agency Refreshed Media, underpins the message that 16 to 24 year-olds need to be financially aware in the economic downturn.

Given that young people are generally inherently reluctant to take advice from their parental figures, the fifty-plus year old public-school educated DJ is clearly the right man to communicate this message. After all he once got shot at, you know.

Mark Thompson shouldn't relent even if Homes Under The Hammer stars walk out

More shocking news for the BBC: The Scotsman reports that Tam Dean Burn has added his voice to the chorus of actors vowing never to work for the Corporation again unless it reverses its decision not to show the DEC broadcast.

What do you mean you've never heard of Tam Dean Burn? He found fame starring in two episodes of Hamish Macbeth as well as three episodes of The Bill over a decade ago, obviously, and has had walk on parts in minor BBC dramas, such as Holby City, ever since.

Mark Thompson, already on the ropes after numerous other BBC scandals, must have thought that things on his watch could not get any worse when former Soldier, Soldier and Boon actress (where she played Mandy), Samantha Morton, announced that she would be taking her talent elsewhere unless the broadcast was made, but he clearly underestimated the steely grit and moral rectitude of the theatrical fraternity.

But the BBC remains resolute. What will it take? PC Tony Stamp actor Graham Cole to also add his name to the list before Thompson relents?

Point is, for once, I agree with the BBC - in my view it is not up to the state-owned broadcaster to transmit this - or any other - charity plea. Surely people who are moved by the news pictures from the disaster zones to donate money are intelligent enough to do so without being browbeaten by the BBC or, indeed, a couple of two-bit publicity-seeking actors.

Get kids smoking young and help save the country

Presumably invoking the spirit of Gordon Brown and that ‘unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures', it was heartening to read that 24-year-old mother of three Kelly Marie Pocock from Merthyr Vale was doing her bit to support our beleaguered tobacco industry, thereby helping protect British jobs.

What made this particular tale all the more gratifying is that it emerged on the same day that a report from the Office of National Statistics showed that much like car manufacturing, smoking levels were at an all time low.

However Pocock found her interventionist attempt at reversing this smoking slump landed her at Merthyr Crown Court after one of her ‘friends' filmed footage of Pocock's three-year-old son chugging away on a cigarette on her mobile phone, and then handed the footage to social services.

As reported in the newspapers, the court heard that the boy looked like a seasoned smoker such was his skill with cheroot and lighter, thereby showing that Pocock had greater foresight than either Brown or Alistair Darling in predicting the collapse of UK plc.

Common sense prevailed and Pocock was spared a custodial sentence; personally I think she deserves a place on the front bench.

Worst press release of the week...so far

How many excruciating football puns and analogies is it possible to fit into one press release? PR agency Pressrelations has managed an astonishing nine into a release heralding the arrival of a lead account handler at hitherto unknown ‘ad agency' Open Soho.

Headlined ‘NIKE BIG KICKER PUTS HIMSELF IN OPEN SPACE', the exciting email announces the arrival of Graham Anderson, who left Nike as a marketing manager over five years ago having run its press office over a decade ago, and is therefore directly linked to the brand's close association with football.

Written in chatty blokey terms, big kicker Anderson, aged 40, declares that he ‘can't wait for kick off' and that he only knocks about with winners. Even more exciting according to his new boss, Simon Impey, the agency is ready for ‘maximum attack' and Anderson is a ‘goalkeeper turned goal-scorer'.

I don't know who I feel more sorry for - Anderson, Impey, the PR *** who had to write it or me for being forced to read it. I think it's me

Feeble and amateurish? I should join a gym

'Feeble' and ‘amateurish'. That's the view of an obscure organisation called the Fitness Industry Association to a Brand Health Check I recently wrote on gyms.

Delighted to receive some feedback for once (see number of comments on Blogs passim....) and aware of our responsibility to grant the right of reply, we will be publishing the entire rant, I mean letter, in its full glory in this week's Marketing.

But there are a number of points - aside from my competence or otherwise - that I thought warranted addressing beforehand. According to the FIA, gym membership is not a luxury (as I described) but is just the same as ‘drinking water and eating brown bread' to over 7m consumers. Really?  Exactly the same as drinking water and eating brown bread? I'd be very surprised given the difference in price.

This just shows that we are all sometimes guilty of making overblown claims - some are feeble and amateurish and some are blatant whoppers, but on occasion trade bodies think that they are professionally qualified to make them and they should therefore pass without further comment.

Obama has already saved the world by deleting Jonathan Ross from memory

What an exciting week. As any fule kno, tomorrow marks the inauguration of Barack Obama while Friday sees is the triumphal return of middle-aged potty mouthed lout Jonathan Ross.

It's been impossible to avoid the former - watching the news last nightm, the BBC's news anchor and Washington correspondent could hardly hide their saccharine joy and reverence at the event, while most other media outlets are treating it as if it were a Coronation from a bygone age rather than the formal swearing in of an elected politician in the twenty-first century.

While noting that it is, of course, an historic moment for the US I can't help wondering if the whole thing has got out of hand and that anyone who thinks that Obama is going to save all of the world's problems is clearly slightly deluded.

Even more exciting though, on Friday, Ross returns to host his stand-up ‘chatshow' vehicle on BBC One. Amazingly the world has not stopped turning since he was suspended three months ago and there have not been riots on the streets - in fact, life has gone on pretty much as normal and he had started to fade from memory. Given that the suspension of Ross coincided with the US election result, perhaps after all we have Obama to thank for something - keeping him out of the headlines/

An emerging media market - old blokes in bad wigs

The quality of most advertising on the London Underground is appalling at the moment. I know this after being stuck in a tunnel on the Piccadilly line last week - every one of the low rent ads was for a cheap, usually obscure medical, brand and was not in the least bit engaging.

In fact, it was all so bad that I found my attention was entirely focussed on the most appallingly obvious wig on an elderly gentleman stood opposite. Except that with his luxuriant mop of suspiciously dark hair and pair of youthful trainers and jeans, this crepe-paper faced man clearly didn't think he was old at all.

Afraid of offending him by offering him my seat and in a homage to Eric Morecambe, I spent the next ten minutes trying to find the join but the rug was so dense and the man was so bald that it was more of a hat than a wig. Fortunately I got to look at his head from various angles as he craned his wrinkly old neck in rapt interest on all the terrible tube card ads on offer.

And it wasn't just me - who speaks with some sympathy as a fellow  baldy - that was fascinated by this bloke's wig; the whole carriage was gawping at it as he carried on scanning the ads, apparently blissfully unaware of the interest his appearance had brought to an otherwise dreary journey.

If any conclusion can be achieved by this encounter, it is that either the London Underground has followed the trend toward media segmentation by hosting ads that only appeal to old blokes in wigs, or that selling outdoor ad space is a bloody difficult job.

Mark Thompson's intervention is too late to save Trisha

Writing in today's Financial Times, BBC director-general Mark Thompson indicates that he would support a merger between Channel 4 and Five in order to save them costs and preserve his precious licence fee from any proposed top-slicing.

Sadly for Trisha Goddard, who has just been dropped by Five for being too expensive (yes, really) his intervention hasn't come soon enough.

Interestingly it was four years ago while Thompson was at C4 that a merger between the two stations was first mooted; it subsequently came to nothing. The rationale is still the same though and seems reasonable enough - cost efficiencies could be achieved by merging back office functions a merger while an increase in scale would create greater clout for negotiations, particularly in advertising.

Well that's the theory, but in practice what would a merged C4 and Five look like and how big a bargaining chip would its ad sales team have? Well here are some choice cuts from their terrestrial schedules today: as well as Going for Gold and Going for Gold Extra, Neighbours x2, Home and Away x2, a very old repeat of The Simpsons, Celebrity Dine With Me and Celebrity Big Brother, there is a TV movie and the 1954 film Three Coins in the Fountain.

Not great stuff to work with really is it - in fact in the entire day for both channels there are only two hours of what could be called original and distinct programmes worth advertisers buying into - the excellent War Zone on Five and the voyeuristically intriguing Half Ton Son on C4.

A merger is only part of the solution; better content for both is the key.

It's Easier Commissioning Rubbish Programmes Than Being Green

Obviously pleased with the format and throwing its much-vaunted ‘public value test' to the wind, BBC Three has been endlessly repeating a show that it ran over Christmas called Most Annoying People 2008.

It's a predictably crummy cheap programme, more the sort of low-brow populist fare that you'd find on E4, Bravo or Sky One, but is harmless enough and I suppose could be called knockabout media navel-gazing fun.

Inspired by this uninspiring format while stranded at home due to Network Rail's inability to string up power cables properly, I thought who would be likely contenders for 2009 and stuck in front of the telly some obvious contenders came up.

It wasn't difficult - in fact I've already filled the top two slots with *** Strawbridge and his moronic son James, a sort of skinny Justin Lee-Collins without the personality or sense of humour, from It's Not Easy Being Green, which returned to BBC2 last night. What idiot in a commissioning department thought that this would make good telly?

And then on Channel 4 Phil ‘n' Kirstie returned for yet another series of Location, Location, Location that now looks so out of sync with the national mood the show might as well be a sympathetic look at the world of international bankers.

In an attempt to spice up this tired format Kirstie has copied Sarah Beeny and got pregnant, while in a particularly contrived scene they gather in a banker to pore over digital maps to find the optimum spot for the house-hunters; on this occasion they were the worst couple of venal over-paid cloth-brains that I've ever seen.

So that's at least six places filled from just one night's telly viewing. Any other suggestions are welcome. And then I can hawk the format round to any idiot in any commissioning department and become rich.

Surving Gazza: cheap nasty joke for TV buyers

Paul Gascoigne is a divorcee, a father and also appears quite lonely and a troubled soul, which perhaps explains some of his erratic behaviour. We know this from the endless newspaper inches in the tabloids dedicated gleefully and voyeuristically to his latest exploits while masquerading as concern for his welfare.

He also dyes his hair as was apparent in Surviving Gazza on Channel 4 last night, which took a rather more intelligent and thoughtful view on the impact of his mental illness on him and his estranged family. So what media agency TV buying clown put it all together - divorcee, father, dyes his hair - in order to place a spot in the first ad break for Just For Men?

You know the ad - lonely single father sat at home gets badgered by kids into dyeing his hair as this will ‘make him a very good catch'. I'm sure they thought it was a great wheeze at the time without realising thme consequences for the brand or the programme.

As well as appearing to trivialise Gazza's problems, it also exposed some of the more ridiculous claims in advertising. So by dyeing his hair from grey to a ridiculous jet black, the bloke in the ad with the strange mid-Atlantic accent and the two annoying kids would find eternal happiness? No. All that would happen is that people would laugh about his behind his back. And imagine what that would do to his mental welfare.

Kevin Lygo's Wonky TV schedule

As media scandals go this is a fairly minor one and I expect it has more to do with my own prejudice against stupid bloody Willie Harcourt-Cooze and his stupid chocolates that are bought by even more stupid people, but Willie's Chocolate Christmas was particularly irritating for the fact that it was clearly filmed in September.

Harcourt-Cooze is a character I find it difficult to find any empathy with and I rather hoped that in the original Channel 4 series, Willie's Wonky Choolate Factory, his venture would fail, so quite why viewers were meant to be interested in him and his family pretending it was Christmas at his massive house with phoney shots of him decorating a Christmas tree dressed in scarf and hat while it was still late summer I'm not clear.

I'm all for suspending disbelief in the name of entertainment but it's difficult not to see this as just a plug for the products of an over-privileged entrepreneur. What's more, I thought that 2008 was supposed to be the year that TV companies had finally realised that viewers aren't stupid.