It turned out that I’d left some chewing gum in the ashtray of his taxi. The taxi driver then produced the piece of chewing gum and slammed it into my hand.Suddenly he caught sight of Robinson standing in the hall. He said simply: “Oh! You’re Robert Robinson! Oh, well!” And he disappeared again. So I was left walking into this lovely house, clutching the chewing gum.Robinson was very polite and found me somewhere to dispose of the offending piece of gum.

But it was a bad start.There is one common interviewing mistake – especially if you’re not used to heavy drinking I was interviewing Christopher Hitchens. We went to The French House, in Soho, and Hitchens stoked up for lunch with a couple of malt whiskies. Then we proceeded on to an extended lunch, during which we got through about three bottles of wine.I was keeping my end up, too. It’s noticeable that as the tape goes on, he remains coherent and crisp while my questions become more and more terrible I have no memory of what was said But, for all that drink, the piece turned out fine In fact, I think it was probably better.. The advertising industry has spent must of the last 30 years talking about the globalisation of brands, with the likes of Coca-Cola achieving mega-bucks success on the back of worldwide campaigns. Now, late in the day, the struggling burger chain McDonald’s is hoping to reverse declining sales with its first global advertising drive. By now you may be familiar with the ads, which have Timberlake singing, “Is this the place to eat? Since I don’t cook, I’ll just rock to the beat I’m lovin’ it.

At the end of the day, to relieve the stress, we add a little play. I’m lovin’ it.”Timberlake probably is loving it – McDonald’s has given him six million good reasons to do so McDonald’s is loving it, too. The ads are part of a broader global marketing programme that it calls, somewhat sinisterly, “rolling energy”, which it hopes will revitalise its recent lacklustre performance. “It’s much more than just a new tagline or commercials – it’s a new way of thinking about and expressing our worldwide brand,” according to Larry Light, McDonald’s global chief marketing officer.Whether the 47 million people who visit 30,000 McDonald’s restaurants every day are loving it is a different question The campaign has already been given a critical mauling. One American critic described it as “a bizarre agglomeration of fake hip-hopitude, Pollyana depictions of young people, jumpy editing, insipid philosophy and an extremely dubious selling proposition”.That’s the least of its problems Actually, there are few truly global advertising campaigns. They tend to be limited to business products such as computers, some luxury and cosmetic brands and duty-free. A couple of years ago, for instance, Johnnie Walker ran identical ads in 207 countries.

It seems that McDonald’s is using Timberlake’s youth appeal to cast itself globally as an American icon in the same league as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Marlboro and Levi’s. The trouble is, it could not have chosen a worse time to do it.”Americana just doesn’t play that well around the world at the moment,” says Simon Anholt, director of Place Brands, a company that advises countries on how to market themselves. “Especially since the Gulf war, there is widespread ambivalence about American values. On the one hand, the American promise of abundance and glamour is seen as alluring. On the other hand it is widely seen as alien and corrosive.”Worse still, there are increasing questions over whether global advertising campaigns really make sense. Only last week, a senior executive at the shampoo and cosmetics company Procter & Gamble, which spends $3.8bn (£2.3bn) a year on commercials for brands such as Pantene, confessed that the company has been “too global” in some of its past advertising.The rationale for global advertising is that it saves money and gives a brand global coherence.