Cruise control Tom Cruise has been proactive in his drive for publicity over the years. It will be interesting to see if Paul Bloch, the star’s new PR adviser, can change his image while keeping the media sweet . Popular culture junkies and fans of gossip rags have gorged on the glamorous and public life of Tom Cruise over the past decade. This A-lister is a publicity phenomenon, who has used the global canvas of magazines and newspaper to mould his image. A humble publicist might describe this ineradicable and inherent ability to generate ink as “the stuff”. http://media.guardian.co.uk/columnists/story/0,7550,1637121,00.html

David Cameron is the Tories’ first truly media-savvy leadership candidate. But will the party have sense enough to support him? Last night Ken Clarke withdrew from the Tory leadership race to lick his wounds. However, I suspect the youngest of the candidates never had too much to worry about, and if the Conservative party ever wants to return to power, they’d better support him … not to the “hilt”, because a hilt is what you get on a dagger, but certainly “all the way”. Why? Because David Cameron is the first truly media-savvy candidate the party has ever fielded, and…

We should find time to applaud the Saatchis for a marriage that lasted nearly a quarter of a century and featured some of the most iconic ad campaigns of our time. The Saatchi & Saatchi creative genius Paul Arden writes in his excellent book, It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be, that “getting fired can be a positive career move”. Perhaps the execs at M&C Saatchi might take some solace from this thought after they lost the BA advertising account to BBH. Arden goes on to say that if you get fired the job…

Before trying to get the hip-hop elite on board, McDonald’s should have realised that fast food isn’t cool http://media.guardian.co.uk/marketingandpr/comment/0,7494,1584843,00.html

The engaging innocence of Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff and his fellow Ashes heroes sets them apart from many other sports stars, but it also makes them ideal targets for tabloid journalists looking for scandalous scoops, says Mark Borkowski. http://media.guardian.co.uk/marketingandpr/comment/0,7494,1569150,00.html

Speech and drama. The furore surrounding John Humphrys’ after-dinner comments demonstrates the continuing influence of former Blair aide Tim Allan, but it may also spur the fourth estate to take the fight to the government with a sharper edge, writes Mark Borkowski He’s his own man, John Humphrys. One of the species of risk-taking, truth-seeking Big Beasts that the BBC used to breed by the score, but which are now dwindling to extinction. There are just handfuls left: Humphrys, Simpson, Paxman, Dimbles. That’s it. So who would time it oh-so-carefully to hit the news between the end of the summer…

The nation’s biggest cultural events, like its sporting ones, have evolved over a generation into major business opportunities, but the Edinburgh festival remains a marketing desert http://media.guardian.co.uk/advertising/story/0,7492,1547995,00.html

Terror PR Remember the ‘power surge’ story just after the London bombs went off? A strategic delay on the part of the security spin machine, says Mark Borkowski Standing in whatever shade I could find at noon yesterday, as the two taut minutes of what passes for silence in London ticked away, I considered the nature of the communications contrivance put into operation following the bombings, and that it clearly was not so much a question of what we were told as events unravelled last Thursday, as when. At least 30 minutes passed before anyone in the media was officially…

Heading up PR for Live 8 was a job for an experienced hand with all the right connections – in TV, the press, music management and with the artists themselves

The water-squirting prank was ill-advised, unoriginal and foolish – because we need Tom Cruise more than he needs us I know we like to think we’re the cultural and financial centre of the world but do the math (as the yanks say) and you’ll see that the UK is a mere blip on Hollywood’s sales charts. http://media.guardian.co.uk/columnists/story/0,7550,1510783,00.html

The publicists responsible for rehabilitating Michael Jackson are going to have to acknowledge that part of his legend died in that courthouse. Any publicist worth their salt should be drooling at the thought of the stunts to be pulled over the next few weeks to kick off Michael Jackson’s rehabilitation. http://media.guardian.co.uk/marketingandpr/comment/0,7494,1507059,00.html

The church needs heroes, created by the deeds they perform, not a clever stunt that just gets people talking. News that the Roman Catholic church is trying to solve a shortfall in the recruitment of priests in Westminster by advertising on beermats and in the underground is not as surprising as it should be. http://media.guardian.co.uk/marketingandpr/comment/0,7494,1497755,00.html

Editors must put their feet down, cease attending jollies and pursuing knighthoods and insist their journalists hold a magnifying glass up to every scrap of propaganda No 10 produces from now on http://media.guardian.co.uk/marketingandpr/comment/0,7494,1490418,00.html

This week’s Tony and Cherie interview in the Sun shows just why Blair is the PR star performer of this election while Howard and Kennedy are also-rans In a stunning publicity coup Britain’s CEO and his wife Cherie’s “first ever joint interview” straddled the Sun yesterday with a combination of finesse and brutishness the PR world can only gaze at with awe.

Pizza Express’s cheese-and-basil portraits of the party leaders brought a welcome element of fun to the lacklustre election campaign. What price spontaneity? In this most choreographed of election campaigns, anything that jumps out of the woodwork or off the plate to surprise us is a blessed relief.

I always knew they’d get the PR right for the day. Nobody does events on that scale like we British do, so the prince and the princess (as the wife of a prince is known) could always rely on the organisational skills of the various serfs and comptrollers to deliver the goods when the moment came.

I couldn’t help feeling a touch of nostalgia and even sadness last week as two once mighty icons competed for the headlines as they dillied and dallied and were ultimately both diminished by mishandled PR. Instead of being forthright and bold, Doctor Who, back on earth in a pretty respectable format and to some decent reviews, revealed out of the blue that his latest manifestation in Christopher Eccleston was only doing one series. What a waste of everybody’s time.

With her furry boots and girl-next-door looks, Coleen McLoughlin is an unlikely choice for the cover of global style bible Vogue.