While CBB goings-on may not be great news for John Bercow and his marriage, it looks as though Richard Desmond has scored a PR coup in bringing the franchise to his ailing channel. Thursday’s launch show (peak: 5.6m viewers) has been splashed all over the net as the show’s most watched non sporting programme ever,…
Piers Morgan dismisses the idea that the British Secret services ever murdered anyone. In a new movie documentary feature, Unlawful Killing, Piers suggests, if MI5 don’t kill the baddies, what’s the point of them? I feel that the new Royal couple may have a similar problem. I might have got hold of the wrong end…
Is there any excuse for a deferral, hidden behind the familiar “no comment”? For the first time in my career, I find myself pondering this Churchillian aphorism. “No comment” is a splendid expression which I am using again and again. My old cohorts launched a new offering via PR Week last week, which naturally pasted…
Yesterday I managed to find the time to lunch one of my old journalist pals. Now retired, the wizened old hack knew how to harvest my leads because he cut his teeth in an age when press releases were walked into the newspapers and news desks and journalists needed copious amounts of TLC. In an…
As Andy Gray and Richard Keys reach the desperate end of their careers, Jeremy Clarkson has weighed in to the row, saying that he is concerned about people being sacked and vilified for “heresy by thought”. Is it possible he’s worried about people discovering what he’s thinking? He should be if he is foolish enough…
Andy Gray and Richard Keys were relatively well known sports commentators until a leaked tape showed them uttering sexist comments about assistant referee Sian Massey at the Liverpool v. Wolves game yesterday. Now, their faces are everywhere. There’s no excuse for the sort of behind the scenes off-the-cuff black humour they were indulging in, but…
In the wake of Andy Coulson’s resignation, a number of questions immediately come to mind that have been only passingly addressed by the press over the weekend. How to deal with news organisations owned outright by people such as the Barclay Brothers and Rupert Murdoch comes top of the list for me. We need to…
Listening to yesterday’s Broadcasting House on Radio 4, my sense that the Chilean miners were set to be exploited to the hilt kicked into high gear, listening to the investigative journalist Jonathan Franklin being interviewed about his forthcoming book on the extraordinary experience the 33 men went through. He was slick and sharp – an…
Margaret Thatcher’s great spin man Bernard Ingham knew a thing or two about pragmatism. He kept himself out of the Westland Helicopter Crisis as he knew that even a whiff of his involvement would damage Thatcher. And he was surely very glad of the off the record Downing Street briefings that kept his name out…
The more I think about Lady Gaga’s meaty costume worn at her appearance at the MTV Awards, the less sure I am about the intentions behind it. Is it 1) a controlled and thoughtful satire in meat couture about the plight of women in the pop industry, who are oiled up, lubed up, dressed in…