And thanks to great marketing, they managed that rare mix of being both profitable and much loved.
The front-runners were the banks and the oil firms: both highly profitable, neither particularly loved by voters.In the event the axe fell on the North Sea oil companies, as Gordon Brown announced an increase in the effective corporation tax that they have to pay from 40% the level he set in 2002 to 50% (most firms pay 30%).
These are modestly profitable, but it would love to sell them.
Very few people have managed to make the web profitable - but publishers love it.
Apple, the nation's most profitable tech company (we love our Apple everything), dodged taxes on an estimated $74 billion in earnings over a four-year period through foreign tax shelters and loopholes.
The same was, and is, true of Grove's maverick publisher, Barney Rosset, who loved highbrow literature but also brought out a very profitable line of Victorian spanking porn.
The most widely loved (and profitable) faces in the modern world tend to be exceptionally basic and abstract cartoons: Mickey Mouse, the Simpsons, Tintin, and, simplest of all — barely more than a circle, two dots, and a horizontal line — Charlie Brown.
Since its arrival in its current format in 1995, Top Gear has become one of the BBC's most loved and profitable franchises, with multiple spin-offs including a magazine and a road show.
The most widely loved (and profitable) faces in the modern world tend to be exceptionally basic and abstract cartoons: Mickey Mouse, the Simpsons, Tintin, and, simplest of all barely more than a circle, two dots, and a horizontal line Charlie Brown.
