While the nation is gripped by Pop Idol fever, the ‘stars’ involved are set to make a mint. But are the real losers in the show – or on the sofa? This is the big new entertainment business – sellebrity. Hype people’s hopes, get them to shell out time and money in the (illusory) pursuit of fame, and clear off when you’ve cleared a profit.
Jamie Theakston’s recent brush with the tabloids did wonders for his image. Was this a cunning PR stunt or has the media changed its tune? Jamie’s future looks extra-rosy to me. His image is now nicely tarnished with a tantalisingly grungy edge, a frisson of unpredictability and danger, that makes him just a little cultishly appealing.
Mike Tyson’s yobbish antics at a press conference last week show he has a lot to learn about handling the media. The industry’s very own Nutty Professor, Don King – a carnival huckster barely bettered since the days of PT Barnum – is firmly established as the ringmaster supreme.
Dollar signs are guaranteed to stiffen up interest in the limpest of stories, and so it proved this week. Apparently, the glorious, gorgeous, stunning, mysterious, sexy, charismatic and talented (etc etc) cracker that is Catherine Zeta Jones, has signed a five-year film deal worth $54m. Not bad, eh?
The Advanced Hair Studio hair replacement system is brilliant. I know. Not from personal experience, you understand, but because Graham Gooch, most of the tabloids and half the broadsheets tell me so.
The Daily Mail is now the official drug capital of Fleet Street. According to the Mail, one in 10 people entering the UK from Jamaica is a hired mule stuffed with 100 condoms of cocaine which is subsequently released onto the British market by laxative-toting Yardies.
How many PR executives does it take to change a light bulb? The PR shock horror shock that shocked the nation this week relates to Cardew and Company’s £339,000 bill for so-called “external press support” for the Dome since its closure in September 2000.
A rumour of William Shatner farting during an interview pushed sales of a Star Trek video beyond the final frontier. Shatner vehemently denies he was the culprit. He says it was Leonard Nimoy. Nimoy says it was the sound man. The sound man says it was a passing truck.
Is the Mirror on a mission to rewrite tabloid journalism after shafting Mick Jagger’s PR? Looking from inside the industry, it’s difficult to assess the level of the public’s awareness of the trade in information and access that shapes much of the tabloid media agenda. Mirror showbiz editor Kevin O’Sullivan clearly thinks people are relatively na¿ve, because his article in Friday’s Times is entitled “The Dirty Secret of Celebrity Splashes”.
The newly pregnant Liz Hurley has benefited greatly from reporters’ love of speculation. Speculation, after all, promotes the self-importance of the writer.