Given the scale of the flood disaster in Pakistan, it is distressing to see that the British media seems to be missing any sense of urgency about it. Any coverage seems to be being abrogated in favour of the urgent news that Wayne Rooney may have slept with prostitutes. I am beginning to wonder if…
The Treasury team stepped out into the sunshine to announce George Osborne’s raft of cuts which aim to make recovery a sure thing – a wise move, as it’s always easier to disguise bad news in good weather. There was a fair bit of tough news to swallow all round, but what intrigued me was…
Michael Jackson’s done it again, surprising all the nay sayers who had written him off as a wash-out and a has-been. He’s sold out 50 dates at the O2 arena and will, assuming everything goes according to plan, play to around a million fans over that period. Clearly all the web chatter on Twitter and…
I heard today that Howard Zieff had died – a name I’d not really encountered before, despite the fact that he’d directed a few breezy comedies like Private Benjamin, starring Goldie Hawn – but the obituaries made me sit up and take notice. It turns out that, when he started out in advertising, he was…
Where have all the rebellious heroes of British music gone? If the Brit Awards are anything to go by, there is pretty much no such animal anymore, just a parade of no-marks who are too wary of upsetting Mastercard, the sponsors, and the TV executives to do anything interesting. The fact that the inoffensive Welsh…
Christmas is fast approaching and the battle to be top game dog is at its most intense, with the R word hanging over most products and retailers. Confidence is key – keep the stores upbeat and they will support the product on the sales floor. And nothing bespeaks confidence quite as well as good promotional…
On Friday morning, hours after Lesley Douglas’s resignation, the controllers of all the BBC radio and television networks were called together, and asked to look carefully at everything they were broadcasting. “We’re all jumpy. We’ve not been told to change or become more conservative. But we are being encouraged to talk about any shows which…