Back in the 1970s the world of squash - that's the game, not the drink - was dominated by players who hailed from a small part of Pakistan. If my memory serves me correctly they may even have all been from the same village. And many of them were related.

In the 1980s and 1990s in advertising, production men, were much the same. Except it wasn't Pakistan that they all hailed from.

For a very long time every production man in London seemed to have come from a small 'tahn' somewhere in Essex. Or they were East End boys. East End boys who put the graft in, enjoyed the occasional sherbert with the stream of print, typo and photographers reps who paid homage at their desks, and who all seemed to own the back end of a greyhound that was running next week at Walthamstow Dog Track.

What the production man did in an agency was make sure that the stuff that had to actually physically get made, got made. And for a price that ensured the agency could carry on affording those fancy chairs in reception.

What the production man wanted at all costs to avoid was 'being done up like a kipper'. And the way to steer clear of this sorry, piscatorial, state was, whenever a quote for some work came in from a supplier, to ring up said supplier and enquire whether he was 'aving a larf?'

There then followed a period of negotiations. And these negotiations would often reveal that yes, indeed a 'larf' was being had. So prices would go down, eyebrows would go up, prices would go down a bit more, and eventually a deal would be struck and everyone would be happy.

However, the precise details of the negotiations would always remain a secret more closely guarded than the initiation ceremonies of the Freemasons. And therein lay the power of the production man.

If there was an equivalent position in civilian life it would have been that of the print unions in  Fleet Street. They were that powerful. Yes, it was a power that had to be wielded cautiously, but it was real none the less.

Given this power it should come as no surprise that very few production men ended up short of a bob or two. Indeed, while they may have all come from the same 'tahn' in Essex, they tended to end up on the outskirts of that 'tahn', in a very large gaff, with a very long drive, and a very big Range Rover to drive up it in.

And why not?

Because computers were on their way, and they would change everything.

The thing I could never figure out was whether it was a legal requirement that they had to be called Larry, Barry or Gary. I mean, I once knew one called Steve, but he had no chance of making it.

I started working in advertising 25 years ago. I know this for a fact because I recently came across an agency moving card I wrote for my first ever place of work. The date we moved into a building on Wardour Street was the 15th of September 1984. A lot has changed in those twenty-five years. And most of it to do with technology.

(Okay, admittedly the Soviet Union has also crumbled, apartheid been defeated and America has elected a black president but this is a piece about advertising and, historically, we're not a business that has a great track record when it comes to underestimating the significance of what we do, so I'm going to bang on a bit about how the real importance of the growth of technology in the last 25 years is how it has affected advertising. Shallow, I know, but by the time you finish reading I'll hope you'll see that what I'm striving for is deeply shallow.)

Back in 1984, as a wet behind the ears junior copywriter, one of the earliest briefs I worked on was for the first ever mobile phone to be launched in Britain. Back then 'mobile' phones weren't that mobile as they were powered by a battery the size of a fairly large handbag. A fairly large handbag into which had been crammed three bags of sugar.

The top team at the agency came up with a TV commercial in which a man sitting behind the softly glowing controls of a space ship reported back to his control centre via an onboard communications device. But then the man comes out the tunnel he's been driving through and we see he's a bloke in a car who's been talking on a phone that's also in his car!

It was, to my untutored eye, a very clever piece of communication. It clearly put across the idea that the future was within our grasp. The agency loved it. And so did the client. An enthusiasm that was somewhat deflated when they pointed out that the mobile phone didn't work in tunnels. But no-one in the agency knew that. And why should we as, at that point, no-one had even seen a mobile phone, let alone used one.

The other technology account I worked on was a computer company that had developed software that was easy for businesses to use.  It was a pitch that was worth a million pounds. And back then a million pounds was a lot of money. We won the account. A strapline I'd come up with - 'Written for Businessmen not for Boffins' - being the thing that clinched the deal. Everyone was very happy. A happiness that was somewhat deflated when, before we had the chance to run any actual ads, the client was bought by a bigger company who already had a much larger agency in place. Bastards. ( I konw that after 25 years I should really let this go, but I'm a copywriter, and for us ads that we've done that never ran are as easy to forget and forgive as Maradona's 'Hand Of God' goal is for the 1986 England football team.)

My real point being that back then all this technology was new stuff. Stuff we'd only ever seen when the Americans flew to the moon. Or on the mighty Blake's Seven. And nothing better symbolized the Brave New World we were on the verge of entering in 1984 than the stunning ad that appeared for the Apple Mac.

In it a woman who had obviously just legged it off the front cover of a Roxy Music album ran through a world of grey trudging drones while carrying a sledgehammer which she proceeded to chuck through a massive computer screen. The voiceover then told us that with the launch of the Mac from Apple '1984 wasn't going to be like 1984'. The commercial was a thing of wonder and was directed by Ridley Scott. Or maybe Tony Scott. Or, it's all so long ago, it might even have been Terry Scott. ( N.B. for younger readers, who have no idea who Terry Scott was, imagine, if you can, a funny version of Ricky Gervaise).

The ad went on to win loads of awards.  And Apple went on to become the core of a whole new world of technological wonders.

But how, I hear you asking, has all this technology mullarkey affected the world of advertising? Clearly the point of technology is to make things better. And seeing as we've had 25 years of technology making things better in the world of advertising we've now reached the happy stage where no-one ever does any bad advertising anymore. After all, how could we with all the buttons we can now push?

All this talk of what's happened over the last 25 years lead me to wonder what had become of the building I moved into all those years ago. It was a beautiful place that dated back to 1735. Its main staircase was adorned with a fantastic mural of an 18th century battleship painted by John De Voto, an artist who had also worked on Hampton Court. So I went to have a look. Much to my horror I found it  boarded up and surrounded by scaffolding. Asking a workman who was taking a fag break I discovered that the place had been gutted by a fire. The beautiful interior, including the mural, was gone.

The building had been occupied by a film company. And the word on the street was that the fire had started in an air-conditioning duct. But I have my own theory. And it's all to do with the dangers of too much technology. I reckon that one of the bright sparks at the film company left his Blackberry on top of his Apple and the whole place just crumbled.

(Admittedly this would be a far better gag if the place had actually collapsed into a heap of rubble instead of going up in smoke. But cut me a little slack, I've been doing this for 25 years and I've long since used up all the decent puns).

If you have been, thanks for reading.