human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.’ If advertising is a waste of intelligence, it isn’t a very serious one. Not more than 100,000 men and women work in advertising agencies in the United States – less than 0.1 per cent of the working population. About 15,000 work in British agencies. Most of the people I know in agencies strike me as well cast for their work and reasonably happy in it. Whenever I think that someone is wasting his talents in advertising, I tell him so. One of my partners is a superb naturalist, and secretly resented every day he spent in the agency. On my advice he retired – and went on to save endangered species of fauna from extinction. In the words of the Scottish proverb, ‘Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead.’ A few advertising people regard advertising as an unworthy occupation. Thus the head of the agency in Paris that helped François Mitterrand become President of France called his autobiography: Don’t tell my mother I work in an advertising agency – she thinks I play the piano in a whorehouse. Poor chap.