TELEVISION / York on Ads: Close encounters of the Spielbergian kind: No 36: J FM

WE START with one of those huge old smoke-stacked American trucks, shot radiator-on, bearing down, and looking and sounding particularly psychopathic. How long does it take the American Seventies Cult-Movie Club (we're all members now) to recognise the leading character from Duel (1972), Steven Spielberg's first feature?

We're in for another movie pastiche - another road-cult-movie pastiche at that. Is it selling jeans, cars or American-style beer?

Then we move to a happy wimp - little mouth, little chin - in his happy Workadaddy car. And he's got the radio turned right up on a soul station, blasting away with Sam and Dave and other registered soul classics. He's in a

mellow little capsule, tooling along the open road. Then the truck starts to torment our wimp, Duel style, chasing him, attempting to overtake on dangerous bends, all those American things. He puts his foot down in a stew of sweat and soul to find shelter in a phone booth.

But just like the vengeful Stephen King car, the truck is always with him and the key Duel scene - the one where the faceless truck-driver's booted legs appear dismounting in the gap between running-board and ground - is lovingly reproduced. A heavy, threatening face appears at the window and our little man's practically a puddle.

But the pay-off's delicious; it redeems the steal completely. With a cheery smile and in the tones of Hounslow the big man asks: 'What radio station you listening to?' The soul music isn't incidental, borrowed interest; it's central to J FM (formerly Jazz FM), the London radio station which is positioning itself squarely in the world of Stax and Atlantic rather than Miles and Charlie. In a sector where the main TV advertiser is currently Capital with Chris Tarrant and Tony Blackburn, Jazz FM is doing quite enough to make its distinctive point.

Videos supplied by Tellex Commercials.

(Photographs omitted)