Let's do lunch inside the world of advertising

Only last month, we warned you that Martini's agency, Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury, has installed cameras behind some of the `Martini mirrors' recently erected across London. Now we have a tip about a dodgy phone box in Tottenham Court Road, 10 floors below the office of Leagas Shafron Davis, where bored young creatives Rob Jebb and Aidan Hawkes liven up their days by phoning down and playing pranks on anybody foolish enough to answer the ringing payphone. At the sound of their tentative hello, Jebb pretends he is a DJ on Virgin 1215 and offers pounds 10,000 to the passer- by if he or she is prepared to do some embarrassing task, such as run into a shop demanding payment or lie down on the pavement. Creative director Steve Grime decided to put the pranks to good use. "We are looking at how direct response like this works. It shows the extraordinary power of interactive telephone sales," he said. Anybody wanting to try a bit of direct response on Jebb should call him at Leagas Shafron Davis: you'll find the number in the book.

Which newspaper do agencies like most? Not Sunday Business, that's for sure. Two weeks ago, Arc Advertising issued a writ for pounds 75,000 in unpaid fees. Now Knight Leach Delaney has applied for a winding-up order against one of the companies in the group. But Tom Rubython, the slippery founder, is one step ahead: he has applied for the group to be put into administrative receivership.

They say old ideas are the best - a formula which has certainly been kind to Dave Trott. The guy's an advertising legend but ask anyone in the industry why he's so famous and they'll hem and haw for a moment,touching briefly on his reputation for leftward leanings, before remembering "Hello Tosh, got a Toshiba?" This week Tosh (with a capital T, geddit?) returns to our TV screens after seven years. Trotty's new agency, Walsh Trott Chick Smith, landed the electrical giant's ad business in April. Trott has taken Tosh into new adventures, acting out scenes from movies such as Reservoir Dogs. The legendary line will not be used. Alas.

Media tart Tony Banks MP is still plugging away at his protest against Safeway's advertising. Three weeks ago, he was one of several MPs who signed a House of Commons motion deploring the "sexually suggestive" dialogue dubbed on to the child stars. Now he is threatening to wedge an amendment into the new Broadcasting Bill, curbing the use of children in TV commercials. Stand by for Dennis Potter-inspired films in which grown-ups in nappies shamefacedly confess to having "done a woopsie".

For years now, agencies have brought their controversial work to the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre, for tiny Scot Uisdean Maclean to give them the nod. But nobody has really known what to make of his first name. Let's Do Lunch has a simple explanation: it's a Gaelic form of Hugh. And to pronounce it? Just march up to him, think NASA, and say: "Ooshton, we have a problem."