Two Cubic Equations

This question comes from a TMUA paper, which means that in the real exam you would have 3-4 mins to do each question.  This suggests that there might be a quick way of solving this problem.

Some things to think about:

• What do I know?
• What am I trying to find out?
• Can I rewrite the given information in a way which is more helpful to me?  (It could be that different notation might help)
• Will another way of representing the information help? (this could be a diagram/sketch, but could also involve other respresentations).