Column Eight: Very hot takeaway Currys

DOWN in leafy Marlborough, Wilts, the Dixons Group has come to blows with the local council. The electrical retailer wants to put up reinforced shutters or place concrete bollards in front of its Currys store to foil a plague of ram-raiders. The council says it would spoil the look of the street.

The shop has been attacked three times in the past 12 months. One raid began with the tyre-slashing of local police cars, continued with a high-speed helicopter chase and ended when the thieves sped away at 130mph on the hard shoulder of the wrong side of a dual carriageway, while disgorging hot videos from the car windows.

Dixons is now threatening to close the shop unless it wins its appeal, currently with the Department of Environment. 'If we can't protect our premises, then at the end of the day we'll pull out of the town,' says John Clare, the group managing director.

Meanwhile, he has come up with a stopgap solution. Every evening a 20ft Curry's delivery lorry is cunningly parked in front of the shop.

SOME AD agency figures will go to any lengths to pander to their tobacco clients. The magazine Campaign this week found seven out of 10 agencies surveyed parroting the absurd cigarette industry claim that advertising only encourages brand-switching and doesn't increase total consumption.

But it was left to David Jones, managing director of Collett Dickenson Pearce, which counts Gallaher (the Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut firm) among its clients, to deliver the most fawning support.

No, said the 25-a-day man, he didn't think children were influenced by cigarette advertising. No, it wasn't a moral issue. And no, he wouldn't mind if his three children smoked.

THREE MILLION unemployed or not, Glaxo is finding it hard to get staff. The drugs company is desperate to find a pharmaco-kineticist - a boffin who measures how quickly drugs are absorbed into the body. But with only about 60 of them in the country, the search is proving difficult. Glaxo has now resorted to sending all 60 a recorded cassette tape, urging them to apply.

THE HOISTING of a 'for sale' sign above the Terry's chocolate business yesterday may explain the paranoid reception afforded to a writer trying to visit its York plant last week. She was turned away at the factory gates with the explanation that she might be an industrial spy.