TELEVISION / York on ads: No 32: 3i

A MOODY aerial shot of the City, blue-tinted black-and-white. Urgent music. The tone is Between the Lines . . . British secrets. Then things lighten up considerably: bright cityscapes and landmark buildings. And, God bless us, people staring skywards.

And there we have it. Floating serenely over this lovely 1986 scene, over key City buildings of the last decade (and before, for the NatWest tower looms in one shot), staring into glass-walled climber lifts, appearing in the arc of those crucial, refurbished-loft-style Big Arched Windows, grazing past the Mansion House and flying over the Bank of England, are the delicious objects of the City wage-slaves' attention: these interstellar, Saatchi-ish, Spielbergian eyes, three of them.

It's all explained when we focus on the crowd round the freakish, Blade Runner steps of the Lloyd's building. A first middle-aged City type asks what's happening. A second (they actually look like Michael House of Cards Dobbs characters) replies 'Three eyes floating'.

3i - Investment in Industry - is Britain's largest venture-capital business, and it's being floated - sold off to share subscribers by its owners. It's very like an Eighties privatisation, this float, and the ad is very like an Eighties privatisation commercial, with its heavy symbolism, big production values and starring role for the New City.

Wider share-ownership as manna from heaven is a characteristic Eighties view, with the promise of a very quick killing. Here are admen who believe happy days are here again.

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(Photograph omitted)