Bord Gais's new advertising campaign, featuring a mock CNN news show, are called Maurice Pratt ads by Mr Paul O'Shaughnessy, head of gas trading and marketing, because "you get a different one every week".

The bears featured in the campaign will, the company hopes, become household personalities and have such names as Michael, Barry and Sheila Goodbear. Why, one journalist asked, was there not one called after Charlie Bird?

Mr O'Shaughnessy replied that, in fact, one had been called Charlie Goodbear, for a while at least. But then Bord Gais thought the better of it.