Do celebrities really add all that much to an ad? After all, many of the most definitive campaigns have featured people who were barely better known than a dead hermit.

In this episode, the History of Advertising Podcast tries to get to the bottom of the issue by looking at campaigns from Birds Eye (one of the first to use ‘real’, regional actors) and Holsten Pills (featuring Griff Rhys Jones and the revived digital corpse of John Wayne).