Media Headliner: Can Parkinson make a big impact at Starcom?(Pru Parkinson named head of strategic planning )

The appointment of Pru Parkinson as the head of strategic planning at Starcom took many by surprise, Alasdair Reid writes.

Perhaps now that Pru Parkinson has been persuaded to return to the media business, guardians of the architectural heritage (such as it is) of Chelmsford and the surrounding area will be breathing a sigh of relief.

Recently, she's been lending her other half a hand in a new property development sideline and, in typical Pru Parkinson style, hasn't been afraid of getting her hands dirty.

Some of her acquaintances had assumed this was a particularly savage form of therapy, a transference activity designed to take the frustration of her recent experiences in the ad industry out on the built environment. You can well imagine her brandishing a sledgehammer, to the detriment of some modest dwelling unfortunate enough to stray across her path.

As one former colleague puts it: 'She always had a manic energy. Just looking at her made you feel exhausted. She'd come in covered in cuts and bruises, having fallen down a mountain, swum across a shark-infested lake and run a half-marathon, all before breakfast. We were hiding in the corner, thinking, 'We're dads. We're tired.''

But sometimes raw energy alone, however irrepressible, isn't enough - and many believed that, after a run of bad experiences, not least at Universal McCann and at WPP's planning operation, Nylon, Parkinson quit the ad industry, vowing never to return. They were wrong. Last week, Parkinson was appointed the head of strategic planning for the Starcom agencies.

It's an appointment that took many by surprise - they'd expected the role would be handed to the former OMD planning guru, Mark Palmer. And indeed it is thought that Palmer was offered the job. The sticking point, though, was said to be Palmer's insistence he be able to run other business interests in parallel with the Starcom role. As talks dragged on, it is thought Starcom's ardour began to cool.