Mention the name John Hegarty and some of the best known TV campaigns ever spring to mind. He is the man who gave Levi's gravitas from the time Nick Kamen shocked onlookers in the launderette and a young Brad Pitt photographing with a curvacious brunette in the desert. Mention Audi and Hegarty's line Vorsprung durch technik follows.

For Hegarty, the business of advertising is simple, straightforward. It is about talented people coming together and having great ideas. Whether agency staff sit together or in separate rooms, whether they hang upside down from the ceiling or do away with desks and have bean bags, it is largely irrelevant. Great ideas, great ads maketh.

Relaxed, pragmatic and remarkably demure for a man who has scaled enviable creative heights, Hegarty knows adland intimately and appears content in himself. Diplomatic too. Speaking to him, one suspects that should the UN look towards Europe rather than the Far East for a replacement for Kofi Annan, Hegarty could be in with a shout.

John Bartle, Nigel Bogle and himself first got together in 1973 at TBWA. When asked what for him was the most important element in their 23-year partnership, Hegarty said: “Respect… respect for each others' skills. I think all three of us had that. No one tried to do somebody else's job.” Bartle retired in 1999 but still keeps in contact.

'None of us is as good as all of us' became the BBH mantra. It came out of the fact that the three agency founders had differing skills; Bartle's was in planning, Bogle account management and Hegarty creative. While all three may have been handy at what they did, by combining their talents, they felt they could achieve something special.

“It was a genuine belief that this is a business that no one person is the ultimate boss,” Hegarty said, “it's about a combination of skills working together. By constantly referring to that, you make everyone understand that's how they've got to do things.”

Hegarty avoids using the word 'originality', leaving that feat to God alone.

'Original' prompts unease. He refers to a line he heard which says that 'originality is determined by the obscurity of your sources', a credo not unlike the one used to define plagiarism: 'There's not such thing as plagiarism, you only improve'. Anyway, freshness is the word Hegarty prefers to call on when describing something new and true in ads.

“There's a huge danger with lots of new technology around,” Hegarty said. “There's fragmenting of media, the change of how people are consuming media and how they are more in control. They are going to determine when and what they're going to watch. That means advertisers have really got to think how they're going to communicate.

“But if do great things, people will watch them.” While Hegarty hesitates to describe British advertising as the best there is anywhere, but “it is pretty good”. The UK is lucky in having a perfect population size – not too big, 60 million people – and the market benefits hugely from having the non-advertising BBC, which sets standards.

'The market benefits enormously from having the BBC'- John Hegarty

“Anybody who says to me the market is the great leveller and the great decider, I kind of go, well… if you didn't have a public-funded broadcasting system, commercial TV in the UK would be even worse. One only to go to countries like the US to see the alterative and the way they've had to go to finance TV in a completely different manner.

“In the UK, there's a sense of irony. Humour's important as it's the enemy of authority and it's a great way of getting people to listen. Of course, it's subjective but as a creative person in advertising you either can do humour it or you can't.”

BBH have always had a policy of not working for either a political party or a tobacco company. Hegarty believes that if you subscribe to one political ethos and it conflicts with another, it is hard, if not impossible, to work on such an account. But the agency has had approaches over the years, including when John Major became Conservative leader.

BBH was asked to meet with Chris Patten – a Tory Hegarty admires – but they chose not to do business. BBH does handle public information accounts, such as Barnardo's and anti-smoking campaigns. They are on the Central Office of Information (COI) roster.

While relatively conservative in his style of play, Hegarty admires Trevor Beattie, ex-TBWA and co-founder of Beattie McGuinness Bungay. Beattie has built reputations for clients and himself with clever PR stunts for the likes of fcuk. “Yeah,” Hegarty said, “I think Beattie is a very talented guy. Do I like all his work? No.”

“But he's good for our business. He's a fantastic spokesman. A lot of people didn't like fcuk but it wasn't talking to them. It was intended to annoy them. That's partly what made it successful. They got annoyed and other people went 'yeah!' It's a bit like drugs. The reason drugs are so popular is because they're banned. That's part of their allure.”

BBH limits the agency showreel to current work. So when potential clients come knocking on their door, they get to see only ten commercials and a number of print campaigns. Despite having a collection of brilliant work in their archives, Hegarty does not believe in presenting golden oldies in new business pitches.

Why did BBH do the media deal with Leo Burnett? “We realised we needed more than one office,” Hegarty said, “that everything could no longer be done out of London. That's a thing to learn, you don't get everything right straight off. To make it work, without having a global network, we knew we had to do a deal on media.”

So they signed up with Starcom, giving Leo Burnett a 49 per cent share. BBH now has six agencies in all. Singapore was the first shop outside the UK and then came New York, Tokyo, Shanghai and Sao Paolo. While Hegarty tries not to do too much travelling, duty calls. Luckily, BBH is now the global agency for the