There Is A Strong Link Between The

We All Know That Americans Love Their Statistics - In Sport, Obviously. And In Finance Too.

I've Always Been Scared Of Advertising Folk. I've Met Them At Parties And I've Been To Their Offices And I've Always Found Them Intimidatingly Cool. At One Company I Visited, They Held Their Meetings In A Caravan That Had Somehow Been Installed In The Place, A Rather More Exotic Place To Gather Than The Typical Bbc Glass Box.

Now I Can Broadcast To An Audience Of Several Million People On The 'today' Programme. I Can Talk About The Day's News. But On Radio, Believe It Or Not, We Have Notes And Scripts. And While We Might Ad Lib The Odd Wryly Amusing Asides, They Come At The Frequency Of A Suburban Bus. About One Every 90 Minutes.

Britain, However, Has Ended Up Specializing In The Ones You Don't See As Much Of: Defense Aerospace, Making Drive Shafts For Cars, Pills And Drugs, Designing Chips That Go Into 94 Percent Of The World's Mobile Phones.

Someday We'll Look Back On This Moment And Plow Into A Parked Car.