Mills on ... John Lewis.

You've got to hand it to Nigel Cassidy, the Today programme's sometimes-bumptious business reporter. "So," he inquired last week of the chief executive of the John Lewis department stores, "people are saying you're the next Marks & Spencer" -- an observation he did not mean as a compliment. The poor guy, who obviously thought he was there to plug his wonderful range of products, spluttered indignantly before mounting a stout defence.

Let's be clear: John Lewis is not M&S. At least, not yet. But there are a lot of parallels, not least in its middle-class client base and in the fact that it too, after years of shunning advertising, is new in the market with a 48-sheet poster campaign promoting its wares.

A couple of weeks ago in Private View, Gerard Stamp, while professing his deep-rooted love for all things John Lewis, dismissed their new posters as 20 words too long and utterly incomprehensible.

Hmmm. Well, I also know what he means. I adore John Lewis. There's something indefinably wholesome and decent about the place. It stands for value and trust. Indeed, I know several people who kit out their entire lives in John Lewis stuff -- from curtains to bedlinen to leather gloves to pots and pans and food from Waitrose. But I know what he means about the posters. I've seen them in several locations, not least at Hammersmith and Leicester Square tube stations. Even allowing for the extra time one gets while waiting for a Piccadilly line train, I found them hard to decipher. So heaven only knows what chance a roadside passer-by would have.

Based on the fact that the average consumer isn't going to give these posters more than two or three seconds, Stamp is right to say they are incomprehensible. However, speaking as someone who has read them all the way through, you can certainly understand them. It's just that the reward for making all that effort -- John Lewis has a fabulous stock of toasters, ...