The outcome will play a large part in determining whether Pearson’s American chief executive, Marjorie Scardino, can deliver on her promise to re-focus operations around the group’s core media franchises and ultimately double Pearson’s market capitalisation.Investors are hoping Ms Scardino will do for the FT, which last year sold only 35,000 copies a day in the US, what she did for the Economist when she was a senior executive there: she tripled the magazine’s circulation in 10 years, largely due to success in her native land “We’re only aiming for 100,000 to 150,000 readers. Speaking in his new New York office last week, Richard Lambert, the Financial Times editor, was more measured. “If you walk into the Federal Reserve, you’ll see the FT under a lot of people’s arms. But if you go over to the White House, no one has it.”
The US campaign is the linchpin of the FT’s pounds 100m five-year plan to turn its international edition into a global franchise.

WHEN Pearson announced last week that 1997 pre-tax profits had risen 15 per cent to pounds 323m, it made upbeat noises about a make-or-break gamble – its challenge to the Wall Street Journal on its home turf. Then, when he washed it, the badge fell off to reveal what had been printed on the shirt in the first place: the logo of a brewer.Other tales of poor-quality merchandise are probably legion, but the truth is that clubs get away with it because they can; it is one of the curiosities of football “customers” that they proudly proclaim their loyalty while admitting to themselves that they’ve been had.So, however worked-up investors get about the fall in Newcastle’s share price, above all else football is a mug’s game and everyone depends on that conspiracy – including the City.The crossword clue answer is: “Don’t touch the phone”.. Instead, all clubs have to do is take any product and stick a badge on it. Two years ago, a friend of mine bought a T-shirt bearing the logo of a Premiership club.

In football, however, it doesn’t matter if you raise admission prices or charge over the odds for merchandise; fans will never vote with their feet because your team isn’t a product, but a drug.For all the commercial talk of football clubs as “brands”, no research or creativity is needed to devise anything so grand as a corporate identity. Whatever else comes out of the alleged remarks by two Newcastle United directors that the club’s fans were suckers for over-priced merchandise, we can at last bury the myth that football is just like any other business.Look at it this way: would you stick with your favourite brand of bacon if the price doubled and it started to taste rancid? Probably not, unless your favourite football club had diversified into selling bacon (don’t laugh – you can get Manchester United milk), because in nearly every walk of commercial life people make buying decisions based either on logic or good marketing. “Sorry,” I said, “I forgot the tumbler.” The look on their faces haunts me to this day.Mug’s gameSO THE game’s up. But now things took a turn for the better: the garage had a special promotion on and, because the fates had conspired to force a full tank on me, I qualified for a free glass tumbler.So off I drove again.

Then, 10 minutes down the road, I realised I had to turn back again. All the mechanics and attendants were still in the forecourt shop when I returned; they were probably still discussing the man with no brain who’d filled up his car with diesel But I strode boldly up to the counter. The only thing was, I’d have to fork out for a full tank of petrol to clear out any lurking diesel residue. This, though, is just what I did late one nightmany miles from home after failing to pay attention to the colour of the pump. To have started the car with the wrong fuel would have blown the engine, but the attendant told me there wouldn’t be any mechanics available to drain the tank until the next morning.So after a long trek home and a long trek back to the filling station before sunrise, I arrived to find the mechanics had finished de-dieseling my car.

The answer is printed at the end of this column.AT THE risk of offending taxi drivers, I take a vengeful pleasure in Gordon Brown’s decision to increase the cost of diesel fuel – for reasons I will outline in a terrible confession.You probably think of Bunhill as an urbane sophisticate, a man of letters and not the sort of hapless sap who’d pour diesel fuel into a car designed for ordinary petrol. So as a tribute to the company I conclude with this clue: No cheating (4, 5, 3, 5), Pet hooch, nut the don (anagram). It provides a dial-up horoscope, a dial-up Old Moore’s Almanac, a dating service and a “live psychic” service through which you can speak to a mystic – presumably to get a prediction of the next day’s crossword questions.ATS has an arrangement with its partners by which the newspaper provides the space, the company fills it and the profits are split. And it seems to be a lucrative trade because ATS had a turnover of pounds 3m in 1997, up from pounds 1.9m the year before. And ATS’s work with newspapers does not stop there, because it is also a big player in the classified sections. And “incredible” is the word because to call the solutions line will cost you 50p a minute – and even if you’re only on the phone for 60 seconds, that’s still more money than you’ll have to fork out for the entire newspaper.Clearly, though, this is niche work if you can get it.