I’d be happy to forward you the e-mail where the AM said increased character limits were being tested; it might give some insight into the disparity between the responses of Mountain View and London. Looks like they have a pretty bog standard answer to this when they know they’re supposed to sing from the same page:

http://d0x.com/update-google-responds-to-my-inquiry-about-adwords-ads-with-titles-longer-than-the-25-character-limit-2.html (February 25, 2009)

I also got exactly the same e-mail last week after the AM (bless his cotton socks) realized he should’ve been giving me a bog standard answer instead of what he had heard internally.