The collapse of Lord Triesman – and potentially the British 2018 World Cup bid he was in charge of – after a fit of sexual hubris and some seriously careless talk about bribery, brought on by the less-than-sincere attentions of a younger woman, is a sorry story, but a familiar one. This is a story…
It strikes me that all is not well in Britain’s Got Talent, that something is falling apart. This year, the show opened on 10.6 million viewers (a 44% share). By May it was on a 43%. After four weeks in, it is currently running down 5% on last year, which opened with 11 million viewers….
Most people in the country are worrying about the leadership of the country under the new coalition, and their concerns for the nation run to a number of issues, from what will happen with capital gains tax, what will happen with inheritance tax, will there or won’t there be cuts in public services, will the…
Danny Dyer’s been cut from his role as Zoo magazine’s Agony Uncle after apparently dishing out a receipe for vengeance instead of advice – his column advised one dumped correspondent to “cut your ex’s face, and then no one will want her” if all other options failed. So is this a “regrettable production error”, as…
I went to supper at the small but deliciously formed Texture restaurant in Portman Street last night with our clients, the government of South Australia, hosted by the Agent General, Bill Muirhead, to celebrate the First Family of Australian wine production. I sat next to Robert Hill Smith, who runs the Yalumba winery. Yalumba is…
Most people in the country are worrying about the leadership of the country under the new coalition, and their concerns for the nation run to a number of issues, from what will happen with capital gains tax, what will happen with inheritance tax, will there or won’t there be cuts in public services, will the…
The failure of anyone to take meaningful control of the country in the wake of the General Election says a great deal about the hype that the media work up as a cappuccino froth of sound bites. It felt like going to a bad movie – the trailer was exceptional but the movie itself is…
Since I encountered an intriguing article on Genghis Khan, which seemed to me to prove that he was one of the first great leaders to employ a publicist, and posted a link to it on Twitter, there have been quite a number of responses suggesting that Jesus, Pliny, Alexander the Great and Moses all employed…
Finagle’s Law of Dynamic Negatives states that ‘anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment!’. From now on, I suspect, any political instance of this law in action will be known as the ‘Brown Variant’, after unguarded remarks about a woman he had just spoken to on a walkabout were broadcast to the…
When I was 19, the publicist Theo Cowan – this country’s first pro celebrity PR wrangler, who created the Rank Charm School, an acting school run the Rank Film company that brought the world Roger Moore, Joan Collins, Christopher Lee, Diana Dors and more – granted me an audience in Poland Street. “Keep your clients’…