IN a TV advert announcing the change of name for an insurance company, Ringo Starr is pictured in the back of a car being mobbed by teenage girls, asking: “If I was still Richard Starkey, would any of this have happened?”

The message of the advert, which features other celebrities operating under strange aliases, is that changing your name is a good thing, even when you’re a man in his 60s still calling himself Alice Cooper.

The question posed by Ringo is one that most of us will have been puzzling over since the ad was first aired.

While it may be easy to dismiss as a joke, the importance of the drummer’s name to the Beatles’ success can never be underestimated and there is no simple answer to this conundrum.

Would all those great songs written by Lennon and McCartney have fallen on deaf ears if Ringo hadn’t come up with that novelty pseudonym?

After all, when your bandmates are called John, Paul and George, you have to ask yourself - will the record-buying public tolerate another ‘normal’ Christian name?

Perhaps the advert is Ringo’s attempt to win more widespread recognition for this important and often overlooked contribution to the Fab Four’s legacy. There’s only so long you can sit back and listen as everyone heaps praise on your colleagues without wanting to respond through the criminally under-used medium of a financial services commercial.

The advert does at least answer the question of what exactly was Ringo was so busy doing when he issued that mildly threatening video message refusing to sign any more autographs.

We now know that he was hawking the services of the insurance company formerly known as Norwich Union.

I’m sure all those fans who were warned by Ringo that their requests for items to be signed would be binned after a certain date will now understand his ultimatum, which was, let’s not forget, issued “with peace and love”.

Ringo’s advert appearance certainly represents another unwanted milestone in the economic downturn.

When ex-Beatles resort to supplementing their incomes like this, you know the credit crunch is beginning to bite across the board.

Give it a few months and Paul McCartney will be turning up as the new voice of the Churchill dog.