Bromley cabbie James Edwards has made a startling revelation that sheds some light on the high-fiving world of ad agency marketeers.

Edwards saw fit to change his surname to Warburton, as part of a frankly bizarre advertising campaign for Warburtons, which involves cabbies sporting fake Warburtons tattoos and handing out free loaves to passengers. "I changed my name by deed poll last week and now I just need to convince the wife to do the same. It’s all in a day’s work for me," said a game Edwards, nay Warburton.

The plan, it has been reported, is to roll out the campaign in Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester and Cardiff (the free loaves, we hope, not the name changes).

Following Warburtons’ surreal TV ad campaign of recent weeks, which came hot on the heels of Hovis’ own megabucks two-minute-long race through history, the worry now is that this sets the tone for some kind of marketing arms race between the brands.

We can only speculate on what might happen next - perhaps these:

December 2008: Hovis convinces Wayne Rooney to rebrand himself as Hovis Best-of-Both

January 2009: Jonathan Warburton changes his name to Wayne Rooney and films himself booting Hovis loaves into a bin

April 2009: Hovis buys out Coca-Cola to become the UK’s biggest brand and rebrands it Hovis, sticking a loaf of bread to the side of every can

2010: Warburtons and Hovis cease making bread to focus on who can land on Mars first.