According to opinion polls, most people are prepared to accept as fact the worrying statistic that one in three people will be diagnosed with a form of cancer in their lifetime... but when asked about their own chances of contracting the disease, those same people identify the odds as being approximately one in ten. The psychology behind this skewed thinking can be used to explain a great deal about the way we conduct our lives.

This phenomenon also makes it very hard to alter people's behaviour when it comes to risk-taking. While they may be prepared to accept there is a general risk, they are less prepared to admit that this risk applies to themselves. After all, the chances are that almost everybody who is reading this regards themselves to be a 'better than average' driver... and you can't all be right.

Now, add into this heady mix the complexity of an occupation where risking your life is part of the equation. Faced by the possibility of deployment in two dangerous theatres of war, British soldiers are bound to have a different mentality when it comes to their own safety... one that may often be reflected in a sense of nihilistic invulnerability.

So it isn't altogether surprising that soldiers have twice as much chance of being killed in a traffic accident than the rest of us.

Persuading them to act with more circumspection is anything but straightforward... but it seems to DAVID that the approach adopted here is about as good as it gets. For starters, the film gets the visual vernacular right... the behaviour feels right and, most importantly, by asking the target audience to consider their families rather than themselves, there seems a much greater chance that the message will get across.

This Home Office film is ostensibly designed to let employers know about new regulations governing the use of migrant workers from outside the European Community. But its tone suggests a hidden agenda and, as hidden agendas go, it's a little on the obvious side. Our Government appears intent on sending a signal to companies that any attempt to bring migrant workers into the UK is destined to fail.

As a piece of propaganda, it is immensely powerful... no-one can miss the severity of its tone and the direness of the warning it contains. The metaphor is unrelentingly pessimistic... even if you don't fail at one hurdle, one of the others is bound to trip you up.

But who is the target audience? Is this film really trying to reach potential employers of migrant workers or is it intended to reassure a broader audience unjustly worried about foreign arrivals? If, as seems likely, it is the latter then it is a very dubious use of Government resources as the message seems designed to staunch the defection of working class Labour supporters to the BNP by signalling a willingness by our Government to pander to the values of the far right. It discredits all involved.

There's a real risk when employing heavy-weight actors to speak on behalf of a brand or service that the audience, who is accustomed to the idea that these people can adopt other personae, will doubt their sincerity. Gary Oldman's appearance in a promotional film for ITV provides a perfect illustration of this phenomenon... Oldman's attempt to sound sincere has him appearing so ill at ease that it feels as though there's a gun trained on his head.

It's tempting to blame the script (it is very poor, it feels a bit like someone Googled the word 'three' and then wrote down pretty much everything that appeared) but Oldman has form for this kind of thing. He appeared in a commercial for Nokia last year in which he produced a similarly stilted performance... it's as though there's a question mark in his head about whether his participation constitutes selling out and he's trying to cover it up. Our advice is: "relax... of course, it's selling out. Just think about the new house you can now afford."

At least Oldman's manner is sufficiently affable that his lack of sincerity is somehow forgiveable. Not so Samuel L Jackson. His performances for Virgin Media are so brimming with enthusiasm that it becomes an unbelievable proposition... there is no authenticity to the idea that Jackson knows anything about Virgin Media, much less that he can authoritatively recommend it.

The audience can accept that actors of the status of Oldman and Jackson are going to be paid lots of money to appear in commercials and the like... but they want to believe that their participation is based, in part, on a genuine belief in the service on offer. Without that... there is nothing on offer but an acting performance. And, in that case, asking us to believe that Oldman watches ITV or that Jackson uses Virgin Media is like asking us to believe that Anthony Hopkins dines on human livers which, we have it on good authority, he does not.

Today marks the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing and as we watch the featured ad in which Kelly Holmes exhorts us to eat Kellogg's cereals, we remember the joy of her double Gold Medal performances in Athens and try to forgive her for the most embarrassing turn in front of a camera since Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox brought broadcasting into disrepute at the inaugural Brit Awards.

You can almost hear the collective sighs of desperation from the production team as Holmes's head inexplicably twitches like a string puppet being held by an angry toddler. Middle-distance runners are unlike sprinters whose performances are based wholly on brute force or long-distance runners who depend on their ability to outlast each other... Holmes's race distances require a bit of nous but any notion that the intelligence needed for her to perform at the highest level on the track might translate into something useful in front of the camera prove utterly devoid of hope.

It's hard to believe that there wasn't sniggering across the set when Holmes delivered her final line: "wake up to breakfast with Kellogg's and see if you can perform better"... just how many boxes of Corn Flakes would it take for Holmes to improve her performance in this ad?

Comedy aficionados among you will recognise the headline above as a quote from Basil Fawlty. It came as a riposte when things were temporarily going well for the hapless Torquay hotelier and his wife Sybil had pointed out that he was in an odd mood... adding that he seemed "happy".

The ability to find moments of happiness as the global economy shudders into reverse may prove to be the difference between 'existing' and 'living' over the next several years and a couple of advertisers seem keen to lay claim to it.

The first of these is the featured ad for Norwich Union who infamously took possession of 'happy' by claiming their sales representative would 'quote you happy' if you called them up. 'Happy' in the new commercial is an actual person who is contacted by the insurer to help them and their customers in their hour of need. It's a strong signal that 'quote me happy' is coming back... something that's sure to make Norwich Union's staff very grumpy indeed as they face the inevitable barrage of challenges it will provoke from our good selves - the general public.

Also laying claim to happiness over the weekend was a new product from Heinz called Spread & Bake which is of those products for people who cannot cook but haven't come to terms with it yet. The ad has a woman who is humming along to Sting's version of 'Spread A Little Happiness' being overheard by someone who is passing by. This turns out to be akin to a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, as people are infected by the desire to hum the irritatingly little ditty.

Of course, the most famous appropriation of 'happiness' is one that we can be certain will not be making a comeback... and that was by Hamlet cigars in a campaign which equated 'happiness' with 'consolation'... ironically, this is a version of the notion of 'happiness' which is probably most appropriate to the current climate.