Pembroke: Carling tests new insights

Fresh from his honeymoon on safari in Zimbabwe and on the beach in Mauritius, Will Carling, the England rugby captain, is getting back to business. Insights, his management training company, which uses sports stars as motivational speakers in company seminars, has been busy in the transfer market.

Carling is signing up Lawrie McMenemy, now at Southampton football club, Rebecca Stephens, who was the first woman to climb Everest, and Geoff Cook, the former England rugby manager.

Would Mr McMenemy draw on his experiences as assistant to Graham Taylor during his ill-starred stay as England football manager? Mr Carling is diplomatic: 'People like to hear about success and failure.'

In what is thought to be a first, one of Britain's best- loved car companies is to launch a model designed by a journalist. Caterham Cars, which produces the trouser- rattlingly fast Super 7 sports cars, will unveil a 150 mph model at the Motor Show in October, designed by Iain Robertson, news editor of Autocar & Motor.

Mr Roberston is a trained designer and used to work at Caterham as a sales manager. No doubt we can expect an unbiased road test of the car, codenamed C21, in Mr Robertson's journal? 'I should think it means they are more likely to do a hatchet job on it,' he says.

Lever Bros, which gave us Persil Power and the saga of the rotting underpants, is causing a stir with a new advertising campaign, this time for Radion. The posters feature Mr Motivator, GMTV's fitness trainer, standing legs akimbo in skin- tight yellow lycra, holding a box of the powder above his head.

Reaction from several women at the poster sites shows that consumer interest is not directed at the soap powder but at part of Mr Motivator's anatomy. At a bus-shelter in Hackney, east London, groups of women have been wandering past, then stopping to point and gape.

'It is, shall we say, a feature,' Lever says.

Also extolling the power of advertising is John Wellington, head of Country 1035, Europe's first all-country radio station which twangs on to the airwaves next Thursday.

Mr Wellington, who lives in Sussex, has been looking for a pied-a-terre in London. He placed a notice on the station's test transmissions appealing for accommodation near the station's Fulham studio, and was astonished when an offer came in within 20 seconds.

Jokers in the City were pulling each others' legs yesterday, saying that 'the Fed' was going to make a move. Square Milers paled at the prospect of an unforeseen interest rate hike, before they were put in the picture by smirking colleagues. The Fed in question was not the one headed by Alan Greenspan in the US, but a horse running in the 4.40 at Edinburgh. It made more than a move - it won by a length at 11-8.