Media Headliner: Sharrocks brings Hollywood charm to the Aegis challenge.

Nigel Sharrocks is likely to use a lighter touch than his predecessor.

For a man who, according to acquaintances, is an accomplished name- dropper, Nigel Sharrocks managed remarkably well to keep his own name out of the headlines during negotiations for his new job.

While the departure of Mark Craze, as the chief executive of Aegis Media UK and Ireland, had been anticipated since Jerry Buhlmann beat him to the top European job, the fact that Sharrocks was going to be his replacement (Campaign, last week) was much more of a surprise.

After all, Sharrocks, 47, has been out of the agency game for seven years and, after five years as the managing director of Warner Brothers Pictures, people assumed he was perfectly settled mixing with his Hollywood friends.

And some thought that culturally, Carat would hardly be the agency Sharrocks would choose - the two just looked such unlikely bedfellows.

'If there's such a person as a non-Carat person, then that would be Nigel,' Simon Mathews, a partner at Rise Communications, says.

Bolton-born Sharrocks, who is married to the BBC newsreader Fiona Bruce with whom he has two children, was unavailable to talk about his new role.