M&C Saatchi is one of the advertising groups pitching for the Government's £75 million childhood obesity campaign. However, the group may want to reconsider other high-calorific pitches it is involved with at the moment if it wants to secure the lucrative deal. The advertising group behind Royal Bank of Scotland and MFI is also under- stood to be pitching for the Pizza Hut account. With its deep-filled cheese crusts and meaty toppings, this is hardly the association that the advertising group needs.

However, perhaps the third pitch M&C Saatchi is involved in will make up for the excess saturated fat. It is also trying to win the creative account of the health food store Holland & Barrett. The Government is creating an anti-obesity campaign to help to tackle the problem of expanding waistlines among children more comfortable wolfing down pizzas in front of the television than playing a healthy game of football.

Busman's holiday for staff at John Lewis

John Lewis is famous for its good treatment of its employees — or “partners”, as the employee-owned group likes to call them. Staff recently took home record bonuses, sharing more than £150 million among 68,000 employees — about 18 per cent of their salaries. But surely the latest move is too much.

It has emerged that the devoted employer has acquired a hotel for its staff and their families through the agent Christie & Co. It paid £1.5 million for the Bala Lake Hotel in Snowdonia, North Wales, set in 70 acres of grounds, hoping staff will use it as a holiday destination. While staff appear to like their employer, do they really want to spend their holidays with colleagues?

— Fernando Rodés Vilá, the chief executive of Havas, the French advertising group, knows his chairman and majority shareholder Vincent Bollore too well. Last month he told The Times that Mr Bollore will not give up in his pursuit of Aegis. The suave Frenchman yesterday asked for two seats on the Aegis board, even though he has already tried and failed four other times. Mr Rodés said last month: “Aegis will one day or another be sold and, knowing Vincent Bollore as I do, he's the kind of person who will never quit.” The French group's request has been rejected on four occasions by Aegis on the grounds that its major stake in rival company Havas is a conflict of interest.

— Quiet flights could end soon. Not only are mobile phones about to be introduced by some carriers, but airliners could be transformed into sky-high casinos. 888, the online gambling company, is hoping to offer a betting service on in-flight entertainment systems. It has signed a deal with DTI, the in-flight entertainment provider, and says that it will be able to offer the service to passengers as soon as the technology and regulatory approvals are in place.

— A British producer financing The Last Station, a film about the last year of Leo Tolstoy's life, starring Dame Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, left, and James McAvoy, is using a German crew because of the lack of tax incentives offered by Gordon Brown. Chris Curling began filming in Germany on April 7 and hopes to save £2 million by using a German crew, complete with German tax inducements.

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