Cinzano of the vermouth market in Europe was measured in the low single digits, sales that placed it a distant second to Martini. As a result of a 1997 merger, Grand Metropolitan became Diageo; two years later, Diageo sold Cinzano to the privately held Gruppo Campari. The Cinzano bicycling team had a central role in the film "Breaking Away". Cinzano was well known in Britain for its humorous television advertisements featuring Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins. One of these featured the pair on a plane journey, with Rossiter accidentally hitting the "recline" switch on Collins chair, causing her to spill a
Leonard Rossiter demobbed he worked for six years as an insurance clerk in the claims and accident departments of the Commercial Union Insurance Company. From childhood he was an apparently unlikely but in fact enthusiastic and capable sportsman in football, cricket, tennis and later squash. Rossiter joined the Wavertree Community Centre Drama Group and made his first appearance with the Adastra Players in Terence Rattigan's "Flare Path". The local critic said that he "was particularly outstanding, his one fault being a tendency to speak too fast on one or two occasions". He gave up his insurance job to enrol in Preston repertory