Clinton, Copenhagen, Afghanistan, Suppression and the X Factor
The suppression of information takes many guises, I’m beginning to realise. Many guises, but at the heart, the old ways of doing things still rule. Someone pulls strings and the neck of the bag tightens. Take, for a start, Hillary’s Secret War, a book detailing the ways in which a rightwing think-tank’s output on the […]
Why Tiger Woods PR disaster could scare brands off sports stars for good
Another piece, by me, on the Tiger Woods brand disintegration has appeared in Guardian Online’s Media section. It looks at the way that sports endorsement has been shifting away from volatile and risky sports stars, and at where the big money is settling in the aftermath of the Tiger Woods PR meltdown. “Let’s get one […]
The Sleb's Prayer and The Exterminating Factor
Have you overdosed on the X Factor? Are the opinions of the judges getting you down? Have you felt like venting your feelings about the loss of your favourite contestant? Did Danyl’s departure in the semi-finals really get your goat? Did Lucie losing out to Jedward rile you to the point of despair? Or are […]
Risking the Tiger Woods Economy
I was asked to comment on the fallout from Tiger Woods’s bad week in the press by the Guardian last week – the resulting article appears in today’s Media section and online under the headline In Need of a Tigerish Attorney. I took a critical look at the way he and his lawyer, Mark NeJame, […]
Tiger Not Yet Out of the Woods
I was asked by the Times what could save Tiger Woods’ reputation in the wake of the revelations that he has, as he put it in his guarded press release the other day, “transgressed”. I told them that the next step for Woods could be a public display of contrition, perhaps in a television interview. […]
Selling Your Name for Christmas
I spoke on the BBC’s World Update yesterday about a 19 year old Wisconsin man who sold his name to an online Finnish electronics retailer via eBay. I discussed the pros and cons of this old idea – dating back to Jim Moran and Maynard Nottage, who both persuaded people to change their names to […]
Katie Price and God
Katie Price, aka Jordan, was bitten by a funnel web spider in the jungle whilst competing in I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and had to be helicoptered out at high speed to the nearest hospital. As she was slipping in and out of consciousness in the helicopter she had a near-death experience; […]
Quantum Physics and Thierry Henry
The Independent on Sunday published an article of mine yesterday, looking at what could have happened to Thierry Henry had he confessed to handling the ball in the France v Republic of Ireland match last week. The What If? is a classic sci-fi and fantasy conceit borrowing the idea of a multiverse from quantum physics, […]
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, […]