Endorsements have long been part of the business of communications, but celebrity endorsements are different.

You don’t readily get the media to admit it, but on Friday night Close Up host Mark Sainsbury said that his programme was covering Greenpeace’s protest against Shell in Port Taranaki because of the involvement of Lucy Lawless’ celebrity status.

This story of celebrity pulling power was juxtaposed with the High Court’s guilty finding against four Lombard Finance directors, including ex-Cabinet Ministers Sir Douglas Graham and William Jeffries. As part of this story, an investor told of how the involvement of Sir Douglas was the only reason for placing a six figure sum with Lombard. The media reported him as saying: "If I can't trust Sir Douglas Graham, then who would I trust?”.

There is no doubt that celebrities or identities seem to make decisions easier for those who follow them. I haven’t heard much about Shell Arctic drilling plans, but if I was to defer to Lawless, I’d be convinced it’s a dreadfully bad thing. She will have saved me thinking about it, and she did just that for many. As her sound bite goes, "Seven of us went up, 133,000 came down” (referring to the number of those who emailed Shell in opposition to its plans).

Similarly, having a couple of justice ministers on the Board of a finance company would have provided integrity of the belt-and-braces kind. But as Justice Robert Dobson has already made plan in his judgment: "Nor is it any part of the Crown’s case that the conducts by the directors in issuing the offer documents was other than honest. In the relevant respect, the law has created criminal liability for what be no more than a material misjudgement about the accuracy and adequacy of the description of the state of the financial health of the company…”

While many investors were "burnt” by Lombard and other finance companies, still more did not succumb to the temptation of their attractive interest rates because of fundamental concerns about the norm of lending to often highly-leveraged developers.

As regard Lucy Lawless, no sooner is she down from the derrick than we find that in a previous life she’s been an enthusiastic "poster girl” for Shell.

Coinciding with this spotlight on celebrities, we find that former Fair Go frontman Kevin Milne is advocating for the Carpet Mill. In his opening gambit he assures us that he’s done his homework. He will be intent on avoiding the advertising ignominy of Richard Long with Hanover and Sir Colin Meads with Provincial Finance.

As Lombard investors bay for Sir Graham’s knighthood, a small point that may be made is that he was not knighted for services to the finance sector. In any event, he will certainly pay a greater price than his former parliamentary colleague Bill Jeffries and any of his co-defendants