I was intrigued by this one also, and found this official comment yesterday in response to a critical message on the Waitrose blog about the ad being insensitive to service families:
"We are really sorry to hear that we have caused you distress with our Christmas advert. This was certainly not our intention and we hope that in explaining our reasons for including this scene, you will see that our intentions were to show that there are people who will be travelling home from various places and with various occupations.
In this particular scene we are showing a photo journalist coming home for Christmas. We specifically lingered on the camera around his neck to show that we are not suggesting that he is a soldier. We acknowledge that at first glance this can be viewed as a soldier coming home as he arrives in a helicopter. We would not want you to feel that we are suggesting that all soldiers or even photo journalists will be able to return home this Christmas.
Please accept our sincerest apologies for this and we will certainly take your comments on board for all of our future advertising."
So it's a journalist - puts paid to your description of a "loveable and creative civvy", Al R!
Come on then, did Waitrose make a contribution to the RAF Benevolent Fund or Help for Heroes in exchange for the Wokka time? If not, it would appear to be a bit of an own-goal, as they are in no way implying anything military in the advert!