"If we had another 10 patients needing intensive care over the Millennium in London it would cause mayhem."Mark Purcell of the London Regional Office of the NHS and the Emergency Bed Service, which co-ordinates bed availability nationwide, said that the situation in London, which has 275 intensive care beds, had been "very tight" for four days with only one bed available. Consultants in Liverpool and the North West said there have been only two high-dependency beds - one step down from intensive care - available at any one time since early November.In London, Dr Stuart Withington, director of intensive care at the Royal London Hospital, said that he was already treating patients who were too sick to travel to an intensive care bed in normal wards. But there were clear signals the problems could become more than the usual "winter pressures". John Hutton, the Health minister, admitted the NHS was under "acute pressure".At one stage yesterday, the capital had no available intensive care beds and it was reported that the nearest was in Eastbourne.

Doctors warned that seriously ill patients would have to be transported hundreds of miles for treatment which was a "very dangerous situation" as many patients were too sick to travel long distances safely. The public believes the Government is failing to deliver on its election promises to make the NHS better, although it still has a long lead over the Tories on the issue of health services. Ministers denied there was a crisis in the NHS yesterday and played down the fears raised by doctors that patients could be at risk over the severe shortage of intensive care beds in London, Liverpool and the North-West of England. Labour Party officials have privately warned Downing Street that focus group results show the health service has overtaken transport and education as the area of greatest concern to voters. I could swear she said: "You're spoiling us, Mr Ambassador.".

TONY BLAIR faces a crisis of confidence in the Government's handling of the NHS after doctors warned last night that a shortage of intensive care beds could cause "mayhem" over the Millennium. Instant irony.Ordinary people were forced to deny an innocent private pleasure for fear of being thought unsophisticated (and no doubt all this showed up in the UK research where people will have said the ad was old-fashioned, risible and "unreal").But the fact is, spoil-sports, that gorgeous world exists; a few years ago at a party at the Italian Embassy I saw Joan Collins - a vision in that season's Versace - bid good night to the ambassador. Tonight is the last night, a special showing; look your last on all things lovely.Ferrero Rocher's British agency is running a new "humorous" commercial with a British suburban setting now, featuring a hostess who wants to keep all the chocs for herself.No embassy backdrop, no butler, no pyramid of golden balls on a silver tray, no Bond-style beauties of all nations, no "you're spoiling us, Mr Ambassador" All swept away by the tide of history, to be replaced by... Abigail's Party.I blame the Clive James tendency - the wish to trade in popular culture but show your middle-brow audience that you're miles above it and they can be too. What would you rather have for Christmas chocs' advertising - Jo Brand and Jenny Eclair?The Ferrero Rocher aesthetic - nouveaux Euro-trash, Monte Carlo funny money, Ivana Trump - reminds me of some amazing things we only glimpse here.But now they have canned the glam ads.

You don't design big international campaigns to catch the Perrier Awards audience.Those of us who liked the ads and the product in the first place but also saw its hilarious subtext were equally sincere It was funny, it was OTT and it was glamorous, too. They're not like us, you know.It couldn't have been straighter - meaning it was old-fashioned aspirational advertising meant to show that people of high degree and great physical attractiveness held the foil-wrapped crunchy chocolatey balls very dear and served them at their grandest parties. They added "Continental" edge to an affordable sweetmeat overwhelmingly given at Christmas. They were in the great tradition of Martini ads and Bond movies.

In a Britain that was still nearer to Reg Varney and On The Buses than Cool Britannia when the first version came out, that meant wildly glamorous. They were not - absolutely not - conceived by creatives with a NW1 and St Martin's sensibility working in an ironic mode They don't do things like that in Euroland. Did they ever tell him? The original Ferrero Rocher TV commercials, conceived in Italy by the Ferrero Rocher in-house advertising people, Publiregia, filmed in Euroland and dubbed for the world, were gorgeous, trashy, utterly un-English and hugely successful. HOW DID they ever tell him? How did they tell Signor Ferrero, the eponymous octogenarian head of the Italian sweetie-maker Ferrero Rocher, that Brits - some of them at least - laughed at his television advertising; that they thought it was vulgar, Eighties, OTT. Festa no Sertao (Jungle Festival) began rather like a Brazilian version of the Shrovetide Fair in Petrushka, with syncopated rhythms propelled by excited jiggling It could have done with more bite.. Then he went straight into the Barcarolle, which made an effective sequence. By this time, I must confess to feeling distinctly numbed, and indeed, if Castro's left foot hadn't been tucked back under the stool, I would have suspected he had the soft pedal down the whole way through. The music of Castro's compatriot, Villa-Lobos, promised a bit more excitement, though a lot of his Hommage à Chopin, written in 1949 for the centenary of the composer's death, vamped about over pedal notes and seemed here, at least, rather casually organised. Choro No 5, composed much earlier, in 1925, had a more characteristically Latin-American rhythmic character, though like everything else, Castro spoilt it by using too much pedal. Overall, an underwhelming experience. After the interval he played the two Op 27 Nocturnes, ignoring the endless possibilities for colouring and subtle contrasts of articulation in the right hand, while by comparison, his left was too loud.