Vegan Football
Football’s back in the news, but this time it’s not about vast sums being splurged on footballers in the transfer market, it’s a stunt that raises awareness about the quality of food at your average sports match. My local team, Forest Green, have a new chairman, CEO of Ecotricity Dale Vince. Vince is vegan – […]
Design an Outrageous Costume for a Star
Pop stars and celebrities all need to match the creative thrust of Lady GaGa and her outrageous, headline-grabbing costumes if they are to rise to the top of the heap, as I discussed in my previous post. So I have produced a short list of suggestions for for awards ceremony costumes for any star who […]
Why Everyone's Going GaGa at the Grammys
Stand by – the Lady GaGa Grammy show is heading to town! The awards season is upon us and the stars have been camping on the doorsteps of designers and rounding up the usual suspects when it comes to kitting themselves out. And they all have to up the ante to match GaGa. No camping […]
Anarcho-Royalism in the UK
In 1981 serious riots swept the country, but the Royal Wedding still comforted and distracted the great unwashed with sumptuous street parties and lit beacons of hope. 30 years later, thanks to the digital enlightenment and the forces of social media, we might well find ourselves experiencing significant social unrest at the wedding of Prince […]
Truth, Transparency & Trust: The New Celebrity Mantra
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 […]
Sullying the Beautiful Game
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 […]
Scapegoats & Subterfuge: Andy Coulson and the Phone Tapping Saga
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 […]
Katie Price, Vengeful Goddess of the Tabloids
Ever since Tom Paine’s book Fame: From the Bronze Age to Britney came out, I have been looking more and more at the way celebrity and myth intersect – and now the news, and Katie Price specifically, has presented another killer analogy. In Celtic mythology, the Year King would be feted and loved and cherished […]
The Cliché Awards: Nominations Open
I think it’s time to act. Consider this, my happy followers. We are being submerged by cliché! Need proof? Just see my post from yesterday: Governor Sarah Palin attacked, as a “blood libel”, suggestions that her political rhetoric contributed to last Saturday’s fatal shootings in Arizona. Blood libel? Glory be! These PR sound bites and […]
Sarah Palin and the Language of Violence
Reading and hearing about the shootings in Tucson, Arizona I am more and more struck by the awful ironies of this tragic event. That Gabrielle Giffords should be a pro-gun Democrat is strange enough, but the fact that her life has been saved by a trauma surgeon just back from Iraq, whose skills have been […]
Underground, Overground
There’s been quite the hoo-ha regarding the undercover policeman who penetrated the Green movement and ended up a member of the Ratcliffe Six, and the more recent revelations about an undercover WPC who had done pretty much the same, both at great cost to the tax payer. But honestly, what did people expect? There are […]
Promote It Like Beckham
Tottenham Hotspur have pulled off a nifty coup for the New Year, bringing David Beckham in to train after a few weeks of speculation and “will he/won’t he?” in the tabloids. Regarding Beckham actually playing for the team, nothing is certain still, but that is hardly the point. The point is that this is a […]
Fallen Archers
Even if you aren’t a fan of The Archers, you surely can’t have escaped the hype surrounding the 60th anniversary of the show. It was a delicate soufflé, whipped up over weeks, promising a storyline that would ‘change Ambridge FOREVER’. Unfortunately, said soufflé emerged from the oven as flat as a pancake. It came down […]
The Borkowski Blog 2010 Review
It’s nearly Christmas, the snow lies heavy on much of Britain in astonishingly traditional fashion, causing less astonishing but no less traditional mayhem, chaos and panic. But, given the last year, one can almost understand why there is panic. The weather may hark back to the past but the world moves on into the future […]
The Borkowski Blog Christmas Appeal
Cycling through London the other day on a Boris Bike (surely one of the great modern branding failures – Barclays pumped millions into the scheme only to lose the name to the charismatic mayor) and sweating like a constipated sumo wrestler, full of the joys of winter and rushing to get back for a meeting, […]
Breaking X Factor in America
This weekend the nation gathers around the TV once again, to watch the X Factor final; the uber-karaoke contest live from the Wembley’s Amphitheatrum Flavium, thumbs poised for pollice verso. Tomorrow we will marvel at the victor who, with scrupulous and unaffected dignity, will be giving thanks to the loyal viewers for allowing him or […]
Malcolm McLaren: Great Lives
Today’s Great Lives on Radio 4 is a look at the life of the great rock and roll swindler, Malcolm McLaren, who died earlier this year. He was nominated for the programme by me. Here’s the blurb from the BBC website. “‘I’ve been called many things,; McLaren wrote as advance publicity for his one man […]
England's World Cup Woes
So Russia have the 2018 World Cup and it’s to go to Qatar in 2022. Anyone trying to suggest that this decision has anything to do with football needs to go away and sit quietly in a dark corner whilst they reevaluate their opinion. The decision by FIFA bigwigs is solely about where the power […]
How to Keep the Spectacle in Spider-Man
The Spider-Man musical has previewed on Broadway to a chorus of boos from the press and I am bewildered as to why Broadway has not harnessed the power of social networking to counter the effect of people like the New York Post’s Michael Riedel, otherwise known as the Butcher of Broadway. It’s a grossly unfair […]
Royal Fairy Tales in the Digital Age
The “Fairy Tale” Royal engagement, announced yesterday, prompted an outpouring of joy in this morning’s papers. The red tops in particular are euphoric, filled to the brim with jubilant headlines and rapturous copy. I suspect the coverage arouses hope that the event will provide succour to their declining readership and influence. Past trends suggest papers […]