J.R. Hartley was a fictional character who appeared in television advertisements for Yellow Pages (a British commercial telephone directory) during the 1980s.
The first scene shows an elderly man going into several bookshops asking for a book called Fly Fishing by an author named "J. R. Hartley". Every attempt failed, and the next scene shows him at home looking dejected. His daughter, sympathising, hands him a copy of the Yellow Pages and the next scene features him looking delighted as a bookshop replies that they have a copy of the book. He asks them to keep it for him, and they ask for his name. He replies, "My name? Oh, yes, it's J...R...Hartley".
The non-existent Hartley became something of a cult figure, to the extent that an author who later brought out a book about fly-fishing published it under the pseudonym, J R Hartley.
