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 […]
Put any misgivings about Jade Goody’s Barnumesque three-ring Circus sideshow to one side for moment. Instead, focus on the silver fox who has been the undisputed ringmaster of recent events in her life; Max Clifford. He may not be attired in a garish ring suit, but Max Clifford is clearly visible as the man, centre […]
A breakfast meeting with David Blaine last week was a very pleasing and revelatory experience; it’s good to sit and talk with someone who really, really gets true showmanship, spectacle, creativity, word of mouth and viral publicity and who has encountered many of the same things I’ve encountered, even the Russian circus act with a […]
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 […]
“Dying is an art,” wrote Sylvia Plath, in her poem Lady Lazarus, and the very public final weeks of Jade Goody are reinforcing Plath’s point remarkably well. Jade Goody has moved on from the unthinking, mouthy persona that brought her to national attention with a sudden aplomb, becoming, in her need to make a better […]
Reading about the Wellcome Collection’s stunt to promote research into the science of the freak show, featuring contortionist Delia du Sol, in the Evening Standard yesterday, I was reminded how, in the dark days of the recession before the big one, I met an extraordinary contortionist called Hugo Zamoratte. Zamoratte was an Argentina exile who was […]
Is there any need to reinvent the dating agency? It seems that there is in America, where a company have audaciously taken the process to its extreme, as a press release announcing the launch of Till-Death-Do-Us-Part.com, “The World’s First Dating Service for the Terminally Ill” proves. Till-Death-Do-Us-Part.com claims to be “designed to cut through the […]
It’s good to see that my client Noel Edmonds’ groundbreaking new show on Sky One, Noel’s HQ, is having some effect. This week, the programme, which aims to inspire people to acts of kindness and help transform lives, tackled the case of Joe Townsend, a 20-year-old veteran of the campaign in Afghanistan. Townsend lost both […]
In a world rife with the ability to keep an eye on where we are, with posters that are embedded with cameras that register how many people look at the poster for more than ten seconds and GPS phones that can traced their owners to within a yard or so, why is that that complaints […]
The BBC are coming under fire again, this time for the sacking of Carol Thatcher, who, according to The Scotsman, “emerged last night as an unlikely rallying point for freedom of speech, after … referring to a tennis player as a ‘golliwog’.” “… a growing list of politicians, lawyers and media experts attacked the BBC,” […]