The Third Leader: Double vision

Is it me, or is it becoming increasingly difficult to hold on to that innocent enthusiasm for life and willingness to invest trust that is the essential characteristic of every Independent reader and writer?

I mention this because, just as I had finished being staggered by the eBay Blue Peter Badge scandal, I was sent reeling by the revelation that Nanette Newman used a hand double in her Fairy Liquid ads.

The Blue Peter scandal is worrying enough, but at least, thankfully, we have a government which takes a close interest in profiting from the sale of honours. Ms Newman being caught not red-handed is, though, in many ways, even more troubling.

Yes, indeed: my mind's eye begins to range back with a new, sad cynicism. Did, I begin to wonder, Henry Cooper and Kevin Keegan splash it all over chest doubles? Did Peter Kay drink his own John Smith's? Could that really have been Sting, the environmental campaigner, advertising a car? Surely, that couldn't have been Stephen Fry in all those ads? And, in the Carling one, was there, in fact, a squirrel double?

Trust, once lost, is not easily regained. There could now be demands for the unedited footage of Ian Botham and the three shredded wheat. Armed robbers may be asked to ram-raid a security-shuttered house containing John Stalker. My researches show that the problem might go back even further. When the great opera singer Martinelli was asked about an advertisement in which he claimed Lucky Strikes didn't irritate his throat, he replied, a little irritably: "How could they irritate my throat? I have never smoked."