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In-play, in-picture adverts will not be part of ITV’s coverage of the Nations Championship in July, but the 20-second slots, shown before a scrum, are set to return for the November Tests and next year’s Six Nations.

The abundance of opportunities in ITV’s schedule in July, with an expanded 48-team football World Cup dominating the airwaves, means advertisers’ spending has been directed elsewhere.

During their debut at this year’s Six Nations, the scrum slots, one of which was available per half, were bought up by blue-chip companies such as Samsung and Virgin Atlantic.

During the segments, audio from the stadium dipped, the screen was split in half and an advert was played in the right-hand part of the screen. Some viewers criticised the concept as intrusive.

Six Nations chief executive Tom Harrison said the adverts may be “a little bit uncomfortable” for viewers in the UK who, unlike those in the US and Australia, are only used to adverts appearing around, rather than during, play.

The Nations Championship pits the northern hemisphere teams who compete in the Six Nations – England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Italy – against southern hemisphere sides South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina, plus invited sides Fiji and Japan.

It starts on Saturday with six games, with a further six on 11 July and 18 July before concluding in November.

With his smooth good looks and jetset lifestyle, half the country fell in love with coffee-loving Tony, as he set about seducing his sexy neighbour

Long before Anthony Head became an international star courtesy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he was already a big hit in the UK – thanks to the long-running Gold Blend adverts.

During the 80s, when TV could be a bit patchy to say the least, sometimes the ads were actually better than the programmes.

And Nescafe discovered they were onto a winner in 1987 when they cast dashing 29-year-old Anthony alongside the impossibly glamorous Sharon Maughan, who was married to Trevor Eve and three years his senior.

Their simmering will-they-won’t-they saga – always over a cup of coffee even though they behaved like a couple who’d been drinking something far stronger – had tens of millions of viewers gripped.

And the pair of them managed to keep it up for an impressive six years by which time the nation was looking forward to the next instalment in the same way we would eagerly await Dallas, Dynasty or Moonlighting. We were hooked.

It explains why, when the final ads ran in 1993, they were watched by a staggering 30 million people. Nescafe did pretty well out of it too, with sales of “sophisticated” Gold Blend, the instant coffee for posh people (if there is such a thing) rising by 50%.

Each 45-second advert, developed by McCann Erickson, would last about six months before the next one came along. It wasn’t until the 12th that the pair – called Tony and Sharon just like the actors – actually professed their love for one another.

The storyline kicked off with them as neighbours and her going round to borrow some coffee because she was having a dinner party and had run out. Viewers did not miss Tony’s raised eyebrow of appreciation as he invited her in. Soon she was popping back to tell him that he’d “saved her life” with his Gold Blend, and then came the many false starts which kept stringing us along for years.

At one point he found another man in her flat – and didn’t realise it was her brother. He hoped she’d go and meet him in New York, even telling her which hotel he was in, but she didn’t go, but then he found her Concorde tickets and wondered why she’d stood him up. She turned up one night and kissed him in the doorway but was gutted to find an old flame was already there, stealing her thunder.

Then there was the discovery that he didn’t like opera, while she didn’t like jazz. And she “loathed” modern art – which was his actual job. But they did still both like the coffee. Which eventually led to her ringing him in the middle of the night to declare: “I want to see you. Now.” Surely this was it?

Not quite. The next time he had to literally extract her from a restaurant where she was dining with a suave Italian, before telling her he loved her. Phew! We got there in the end.

It’s fair to say it was the particular chemistry between Sharon and Tony that made the couple so enticing – because twice afterwards the coffee bigwigs tried to replicate their success, and twice they failed. Louise Hunt and Mark Aiken ran for a bit before petering out in 1997 and the next pair, Simon Bendix and Neil Roberts lasted for just one solitary ad.

The magic had gone. It showed that the ad was of its moment and would probably never work again. But back then it was just what we wanted – a handsome, alpha male and a confident woman with swishy hair and earrings big enough to make Pat Butcher wince. Mad Men, eat your heart out.

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