WELL, Ireland has finally completed a YouTube loop.

Last August, Cawley Nea/TBWA created an absolutely magnificent ad for the Financial Regulator. You know the one. People on a Dublin Bus. Slightly crazed-looking guy breaks the commuter omerta, stands up . . . worrying the people next to him who cringe behind their newspapers in case he's about to produce a handgun and share his true feelings . . . and proclaims, "I don't know what a tracker mortgage is."

Suddenly it's like an AA meeting.

"I don't know how to save money on me car insurance, " chimes in a relieved lady across the aisle, followed by more confessions.

Finally a woman in pink asks, "what's this ad for?"

We almost don't care, but we remember it's the Financial Regulator. Certainly the kids who watched it remembered . . . and remembered well enough to recreate the ad while pissed and headed home on what looks like was targeted, no explanation is necessary. For everybody else, no explanation is possible.

McCann Erickson did the Sprite ad, and Publius would just like to say, that's UTTERLY F**KING BRILLIANT, and to congratulate the first two smart little mammals to nominate themselves for survival through the Age of YouTube that will leave many AdLanders in Jurassic Park.

WHAT IF IRELAND RULED THE WORLD WALSH

PR founder Jim Walsh has been elected president of IPREX, a consortium of 58 independent PR firms with 70 offices worldwide and a combined revenue of $94m.

He is the third non-Yank to hold that title since 1983. Well done.

YAHOO'S CHINESE CHECKERS GOOD WEEK/bad week for Yahoo.

It either is or is not in talks with Microsoft about being bought. It either is or is not in talks to buy social networking site MySpace from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

What we do know is that Yahoo's CEO Terry Semel has stepped down and co-founder Jerry Yang has stepped up to take over. That's the good news.

The bad news is that Yahoo has only just discovered that the Chinese have a problem with free speech. And Yahoo has a problem with that. Pity the sentiments only emerged a day after Yahoo was sued by the mother of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist who sent an email complaining about media restrictions. Yahoo helped Chinese authorities pin him down and in 2005 Shi was convicted of "incitement to subvert state power" and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

After the lawsuit was filed, Yahoo said it told China it condemns "punishment of any activity internationally recognised as free expression". Even then, however, Yahoo couldn't bring itself to mention the case of Shi Tao.

Then they posted it to YouTube.

More than one version has appeared. The most popular has been viewed more than 31,000 times . . . and includes a guy asking, "who's this ad forae and the whole bus answering "the Financial Regulator!" to peals of laughter.

The phenom was pointed out a couple of weeks ago by Contagious magazine's Jessica Greenwood to an audience of marketers at the Spark! breakfast, sponsored by Cawley Nea/TBWA, as a sign of how effective the original ad was.

Now there's a further, utterly Warholian post-modern twist, as those same kids looked up from their copy of Metro and Herald AM on the Dart to see a Sprite ad, tagline, "Because you don't know what a tracker mortgage is."

For those to who the upper deck of a Nitelink bus while one of them shoots it with their mobile phone video camera.hom the message

TIPS, BRIBES & ABUSE all welcome at rdelevan@tribune. ie