Jedward and the X Factor
Jedward may finally be gone from the X Factor, but that’s no reason to expect that they have automatically dipped straight off the fame radar. For all of you wondering why and how they lasted so long on the X Factor, I contributed to a couple of articles in the Independent and the Telegraph looking […]
Jordan's Heart of Darkness
When the troubled tabloid-sacrifice uber babe Katie Price decided to re-enter the jungle, I received numerous requests to comment on TV and radio. For once I held back; I just wasn’t convinced that I had the interest or the energy to offer any opinion on another Katie Price PR move. In truth, I could not […]
Stunt Deflation: The Balloon Boy Aftermath
It seems that there is a total sense of humour failure endemic throughout the world when it comes to stunts like the ‘Balloon Boy’ incident, as the ongoing trial of the parents proves – they apparently pleaded guilty only after the wife, who is Japanese, was threatened with deportation. Certainly, the need to think about […]
Defending Simon Cowell
I appeared on GMTV this morning to defend Simon Cowell – not the obvious popular choice since he let the public vote decide who was to stay in the X Factor instead of condemning Jedward to the slag heap of pop ephemera history, but it really needed doing in a week of froth and fulmination. […]
The X Factor PR Machine
I’ve just been reading an intriguing post by that doyenne of the celebrity underbelly, Madame Arcati, querying the disappearance of an article by the Times’s Dan Sabbagh on Sir Philip Green’s involvement in trying to break the X Factor in America. Arcati, whose blog is the current darling of the blogoshphere and one of its […]
Further Looting of the Dead Celebs
About a month ago, I wrote a blog on brand immortality and the way that people are exploiting dead celebrities to generate vast amounts of money in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death. Now, as the world gears up for This Is It, a film of Jackson rehearsals, CNN have come out with a report […]
Undoing the X Factor
I received an interesting call yesterday, in the wake of the surprising X Factor showdown between Miss Frank and Danyl Johnson on Sunday, from a mysterious man with a social networking plan and a dream to undo Simon Cowell. He wanted to meet me to discuss his plans for guerilla tactics to destabilise the X […]
The Deflation of Balloon Boy
The more implausible elements of the ‘Balloon Boy’ story are deflating fast, but still people are hanging on in there, waiting to see what happens when the balloon crashes finally to earth. Deprived of the possibility of an injured or dead child to fulminate over, the press are waiting to see what happens to the […]
Question Time: The Aftermath
Bearing in mind my post from yesterday, I’m still a little unsure about how the appearance of Nick Griffin on Question Time last night will pan out in the long run. There was too much passion from the panellists, too much shouting down for my tastes. It all seemed too much of a witch-hunt. It […]
Who is Pulling Nick Griffin's PR Strings?
The BBC have, without doubt, handed Nick Griffin and the BNP a potential PR coup by allowing him to appear on Question Time. It is very likely that Griffin will be working desperately hard to avoid belching racist bile, especially as the programme surrounds him – in the interests of the BBC’s “central principle of […]
Jan Moir and the Power of Twitter
Now the dust has cleared – a little – in the wake of Jan Moir’s Mail article looking at the circumstances surrounding the death of Stephen Gately and the subsequent outpouring of Twitter anger, it’s worth asking what the difference is between Moir’s article, aimed at a certain set of like-minded readers, and the response […]
Skaggs, Blags and Rags: Hoaxes and the Press
If you want proof that stunts are an art form, your best bet is to head down to the Tate Modern’s Pop exhibition and take a long, hard look at the Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons exhibits. Here are two prime examples of early stops at one of the stations of the cross of Consumerism, […]
The Ghost Twitterer
Twitter is the place on the net to have fun with publicity, as a brilliant new Halloween stunt, featured in The Sun, proves beyond doubt. “Twitter users will get the chance to communicate with departed showbiz stars this Halloween — in the world’s first online séance,” proclaims the paper. “Tweeters can choose which of their […]
Popularity Politics
Accused of not letting slip any details of policies that would be employed should they form the next Government, the Tories came out in surprisingly brave style yesterday, thanks to George Osborne. He may have the charisma of a financial director of a small engineering firm in Colchester, but Osborne has been the boldest politician […]
Brand Immortality & Looting the Dead
Celebrity death is best done young, or youngish, whilst all the characteristics that enamour the public to them remain intact. It’s not great for the celebrity in question, perhaps, but certain brand-builders love a good image that’s been soused in aspic and preserved for an eternity of milking. Take Michael Jackson, whose death has seen […]
The Bra Necessities
The Swedish military certainly have a way with a publicity stunt, if the story that’s surfaced about poorly designed military bras is anything to go by. Or so my churnophrenic state of mind is telling me, as I dig unceasingly for the truth behind the news. Put it this way, if it’s not a PR […]
Strictly Come Politics: Ageism, Ballroom Dancing and the Conference Season
Nick Clegg’s been getting a great deal of attention in the press at the Lib Dem conference this weekend. What I’ve taken away from Clegg’s conference manoeuvres, however, has not been the substance so much as the style in which it is presented. But then it’s been a weekend of style over substance: 30-year-old Alesha […]
Snapshots of the Past
A bumper day for picture stories in the Telegraph. First up, there’s the photo op for the launch of the Guinness Book of Records, which shows that the Barnum model of photo opportunity has never gone away – this picture of He Pingping, the Mongolian man, who, at 2ft 4in, is the world’s shortest man […]
Court Short
The sudden turnaround in fortunes, in less than a week, of Guinness family member Clare Irby, who started the week as a brazen hussy wreaking havoc on an airline and ended up pretty much exonerated, owes as much to the way the freelance agencies pushing stories out of the courts operate on the zingy and […]
Gordon Brown and the Jinxed Career
Gordon Brown is jinxed. At the Number 10 reception to mark the second anniversary of the Prime Minister’s Talent and Enterprise Taskforce, Perri Luc Kiely, the frizzy haired 13 year old dancer with Britain’s Got Talent winners Diversity, took a tumble, hurt himself, burst into tears and is now taking top billing in the press […]