PEPSI bosses were certainly not going to undersell the launch of their cola's new blue colour scheme at this week's launch in Gatwick. They persuaded Air France to let them paint a Concorde blue, itself a problem because any colour other than white peels at the heat generated by supersonic speed. Pepsi is said to have paid £125,000 to paint the plane blue and the same again to return it to white.

Small beer in a £318 million campaign perhaps and goodness knows what Andre Agassi, Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford were paid to feature prominently at the Gatwick shindig. If it takes £10,000 to get a supermodel out of bed in the morning, how much does it cost to get one to serve as a stewardess on Concorde?

The Margin liked the timing of Richard Branson's Virgin Cola, which just happened to release the results of a consumer sample on the same day, showing that 50 per cent of the sample group preferred Virgin. A Virgin spokesman said the timing was "purely coincidental". Of course it was.