Papa and Nicole Papa and Nicole "Papa" and "Nicole" were fictional characters created to advertise the Renault Clio in the United Kingdom between 1991 and 1998. The "Papa!" "Nicole" and "Nicole!" "Papa" verbal exchanges between Nicole and her father during the advertisements were adapted from an exchange between Nicole Bonnet (played by Audrey Hepburn) and her father (played by Hugh Griffith) in the film "How to Steal a Million" from 1966. Surveys by Channel 4 and ITV revealed the series as the most popular car advertisements ever aired in Britain. In 1996, one survey found that Nicole was recognised by more Britons than
TV advertisements by country commerce." The passage of the 1990 Children's Television Act (CTA), restricted the length of advertising in children's television programming to 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekdays. Since the 1960s, media critics have claimed that the boundaries between "programming" and "advertisements" have been eroded to the point where the line is blurred nearly as much as it was during the beginnings of the medium, when almost all individual television shows were sponsored entirely by a single corporation (the model which was carried over from old-time network radio). For much of the 1970s, 1980s, and