Young and impressionable as I was, I felt inspired to build my own similar work space, and for a long time I found it valuable. Cordoned off at the end of my garden with nobody in my face, I used my brand new outdoor nest for a number of years in coming up with some of the crazy stunts and campaign ideas I remain most proud of to this day, from clown auditions to elephant- accompanied alpine hikes.
Creativity needs space, whether it’s conjuring up PR gold or scribbling visions of gargantuan, insect ridden fruit reminiscent of a homeless former greengrocer’s terminal acid binge. As a result, these spaces take on a kind of sacred quality- they fascinate because they provide a visual and spatial signifier of the moment of genius.
Having said that, Sophie Dahl wasn’t exactly clamouring to poke her way into my shed (thank goodness), and now she couldn’t if she wanted to. I left the house with the garden office a while back, and shortly after my departure a massive tree fell on it and cut it in half. Somewhat put out, I called a workman and asked how much it’d cost to salvage and fix the shed. One hundred quid, I was told.
So there you have it; Sophie Dahl clearly hasn’t asked around in Gloucestershire. Or maybe the issue is that this was Mark Borkowski’s shed, not Roald Dahl’s (pah!). Whatever the price, anyway, this shed moving appeal looks cheap and unnecessary.
What inspired me all those years ago was this man, working in this specific space, and speaking as someone with a similar working style, I hold no illusions about any magic quality to the workspace itself. After my death, any rabid Mark Borkowski fans would do better investing their money in something tasteful, like an enormous bronze statue of me held aloft by the twin atlases of P.T. Barnum and Jim Moran. That’d do for a start.

The humiliation, the public outrage, everyone diving in to offer an opinion. The sniggers the jokes, then the realisation that ‘I’ve lost everyone. Will my sponsors disappear? What an end to my career! Please make the professional humiliation go away. How will my family cope? Will it ever be the same again?’ This rush of emotions concludes with: ‘how could I have been so stupid?’.

This is the point when a chink of light breaks through the storm clouds. These emotions, and the considerable sums of money that lead to them when an indiscretion is outed, are why public figures will invest in expensive legal counsel to protect their privacy, especially if the true picture doesn’t fit the brand image.

Celebrities want to use super-injunctions to keep their dirty laundry locked away so tightly that not even the slightest whiff of scandal can escape. But the social media world means that whatever the spun image that celebrities try to present, the truth, or a version of it, will always emerge. If they’re a caddish serial offender, they’ll be found out.

Twitter makes a PR’s job harder, and the PR profession is grappling with the change. In the 10 minute news swirl, the hope is that you can deal with the issue, put the past behind you and move on. Very few who have dealt with a crisis have not been able to shape a new narrative. OK, it’s horrible at the time but events can be reshaped if you grit your teeth.

The list is enormous. Lesley Grantham, Kate Moss, Richard Bacon, the Hamilton’s, David Mellor, Michael Portillo are just a few names that spring immediately to mind. Obituaries have been written for all of their careers, but they all have one other thing in common; they didn’t hide away when the effluvium hit the air conditioning but dealt with the crisis, no matter how personal and unpleasant it was to do so. They managed the fallout and reinvented their narrative. “You know who” and the club of 2010 play the privacy joker and they are outed more explosively thanks to the fragile vacuum their need for privacy creates.

The truth is they are delaying the inevitable, making it worse. Let’s not forget the great British unwashed make allowances for human fragility but the crowd devours hypocrisy, feeds on the carcass of a sleb reputation downed by hubris and fear. Twitter is akin to a school of piranhas maniacally feeding on the reputation of the victim. Prompt, clear and decisive action needs to be taken before brand gangrene sets in and there aren’t enough limbs left to amputate. Expecting a highly paid legal firm to hold back the tide is lunacy.

“Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings. For there is none worthy of the name but God, whom heaven, earth and sea obey”. These are the words of King Canute, seated on his throne on the seashore, waves lapping round his feet. Canute had been told by oleaginous courtiers that he was: “so great, he could command the tides of the sea to go back”. In the modern age, legal muscle are the new courtiers. Where, though, are the new Canutes?

The revolution in celebrity has changed the rules of engagement and the role of the celebrity has changed. This is the age of the super-injunction, the age when celebrities want to keep their dirty laundry in bomb- and journalist-proof cages so that not even the slightest whiff of scandal can escape. Celebrity is now more than just playing in a team or starring on the screen.

The public investment in the brand and therefore brand truth is more important than a spun image. The days of suppressing the facts are over.

As a fledgling publicist I met her retinue at a film shoot at a long forgotten theatre, axed by funding cuts in another age. The encounter left an indelible mark on my psyche. Not then versed in the ways of celebrity, and unable to comprehend its hierarchy and protocol, I was transfixed by the legend that was Elizabeth Taylor, and the encounter with this uber-sleb ignited an innate curiosity in the ways of Hollywood

That day, Taylor arrived to shoot the movie she was filming in a yellow Rolls Royce. I’m fairly convinced it was the car from the movie of the same name. The stage had been set. Various members of the papparazzi had been tipped off, a curious crowd gathered, waiting for her entrance – delayed, naturally, as Taylor’s make up was touched up in the car by two handmaidens.

She exited the car regally, looking more beautiful than any other mortal. She had journeyed from Olympus and her radiance lit the drab Autumnal gloom of London’s grimy East End.

The moment she stepped into the real world, a flurry of court helpers surrounded her in a circle. The symmetry was perfect, the aura hypnotic. Any questions thrown her way were fielded and analyzed by a series of filters, before the closest aide whispered a definition in her perfect ear. They moved in strange, bureaucratic ballet, a protective guard shielding Taylor from the sins of the world.

Clearly she was utterly spared the monotony of reality. Dependent on a flank of reality minders, she saw the world entirely through their eyes. I quickly realized this game of sparing her from reality was a way of building their power and influence. Celebrities become dependent on the parasites that surround them.

This dependency is corrupting, suspending real life, depleting the person inside and the celebrity’s ability to function. I wonder how much of this is a premeditated plan on the part of the entourage? That brief glimpse into another world fuelled a curiosity in me about the dark side of fame that has stayed with me throughout my career.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the darkness surrounding her, Elizabeth Taylor shone brightly in her long, often brilliant career. Now she is gone it is clear that we are unlikely to see her like again.

Unfortunately, the bloodsuckers remain, casting around for their next fix of weaker celebrity blood.

Take Charlie Sheen, for example. He’s been a chaotic hellraiser for years, but only now is the extent of his hedonism and mania coming out, in a giddy rush. Or take the arrogance of Prince Andrew, which is coming out now and souring many of the deals he was hired to make, trading on hs royal status.

It’s not just toxic celebrity that is being outed; the tobacco industry is also having to cope with the effects of transparency, notably the latest victory for the Smoking Kills lobby. First they got the truth put on cigarette packaging and now the packs will no longer be on display in shops, having also had their attractive design peacockery removed.

But the tobacco industry is far more powerful than any celebrity. Their PR has the biggest budget and the subtlest minds it can find who are prepared to sell death in a tube of paper. Edward Bernays, the father of the publicity industry, is a prime early example of sophisticated campaigns for cigarettes – he got millions of women hooked on them by associating smoking with freedom and the victory of the suffragette movement.

There is no way that they will not have thought of something to counter the disappearance of iconic designs; perhaps a tactile edge for the blank packets, making them wonderful to feel? There is no doubt that big tobacco will comply with the new rulings on the one hand whilst looking hard for ways around it on the other.

But they will be up against it – the coming years will see the integrity of brands and what they stand being outed and, going forward, the brands that will survive are the ones who’s strengths lie in transparency, integrity and brand truth. A brand or celebrity caught lying or filibustering is likely to suffer for it.

Click here to see what Ivan Clark has to say on the matter as well.

I first met Geoff at the height of his journalistic powers, as a showbiz reporter for the Star. This was well before the modern British publicity industry started to emulate Hollywood in the late 20th century, taking control of every aspect of their client and shutting out the media if they wouldn’t play ball; before the idea that stars were brands really set in.

Geoff’s big legacy as a journalist is the Princess Margaret awards, now called the Shaftas (shame the title is so crude). In the days when the geriatric Royal PR spin machine shut up shop at 5pm and the old duffers wouldn’t dignify anything with an answer out of working hours, Geoff announced – at five past five – that Princess Margaret was to make a guest appearance on Crossroads. The story was beautifully absurd. Absurd enough to have everyone gleefully report it long before the Palace could step in and correct the story, allowing it to become one of those ‘true at the time’ stories. Out of this came the Princess Margaret awards, celebrating the liberties taken by showbiz journalists.

But things change, and liberties became less and less desirable to celebrities. And then McCartney found himself in need of a gatekeeper. Geoff, a Beatles fanatic, was the obvious choice; a man who new the game and who could be trusted. A number of kind interviews suggested he would make a happy in-house PR. Geoff of course jumped at the chance and got the job – but he forgot three all-important rules: 1) Never get too close to your heroes; 2) Remember that it’s just a job and 3) Situations always change.

The great publicist Theo Cowan once told me, in a down at heel coffee bar in Soho: “Never forget that PR is just a job, Mark. It’s not a lifestyle, it’s a job.” Geoff, after many good years with the former Beatle, found himself suddenly out in the cold when Heather Mills arrived on the scene. Now he is in a very different place. We should never forget that a job is a job in these straitened times, but it must be strange, if not necessarily satisfactory, to experience such a seismic shift in situation.

Simply, one should never get too close to a client or allow oneself to be sucked in by the lifestyle of your client – they will always move on and there are always too many other people around with their fingers in the same pie. A new marriage or love affair is one of the classic catalysts for change, especially if the new partner is a celebrity too, with their own entourage, as is a big break in America.

Any publicists who believe that the client will always remain faithful are, at best, kidding themselves or at worst seriously deluded. And there are a lot of dilettantes masquerading as publicists nowadays, hooked on the lifestyle and scared of the work who’ll do things for a pittance because they’re daft enough to believe canny producers, managers and clients who tell them they’ll keep then it for the long haul. It’s a hard, hard struggle to plot the course of a client’s career between these rocky outcrops and not everyone has the gift of building relationships in the eternal love triangle of client, media and public.

Publicity is not a glamorous life – it’s hard and thankless. The lesson fresh-faced wannabe publicists need to learn from Geoff’s example is don’t hang on to your ego, be prepared to be dumped and always keep an eye out for the next client opportunity, as you can be sure your clients will be doing the same thing. If you can keep coming up with fresh big ideas every fifteen months you may keep a client for a few more years than others, but nothing is guaranteed.

A publicist can get away with being a yes or no man in a media landscape where the media has been weakened by top publicists in complete control of their clients and lifestyle junkies at the other end of the power spectrum. Whether we like it or not, we need the media to be a little stronger. At the moment, there is little middle ground in the publicity industry, and it needs middle ground. The digital explosion makes it even more complex.

I saw the light and diversified my business offering 10 years ago. I find shoestrings very hard work. I like big budgets. I saw over-supply in the arena and have been proved right as time goes on – more and more in-house folk are being made redundant and every day I see more and more kitchen table businesses setting up.

It’s quite simple to bewitch with the promise of a fast, funky website that seldom matches up to the hype when it arrives. Trust and respect for a publicist’s work is the issue; you have to provide value for money, of course, but not at your own expense. Too few say no, hungering to do the gig rather than walking away. In an age of tight budgets, difficult choices will have to be made. PR folk must make sure the very limited resources are spent on priorities; skill and relevant, intelligent strategies. I believe we should have no higher priority than investing in the future of the craft.

Publicists who don’t invest in the future of the craft urgently need to learn the following from the fate of Geoff Baker: that PR is just a job and that, if they fuck up, there are other jobs that they will have to be prepared to do.

The first is the production of Yes, Prime Minister that has just transferred to the West End. It’s a great show; very funny, very well acted and rather more radical than one would have expected from a comedy institution that makes it to the stage 20-odd years after its heyday. Buy a seat now!

It plays wonderfully to its target audience but, like so much other theatre in the West End, it struggles to reach out to the next generation of audience, the ones that will keep the theatre going as a concern that moves beyond musicals and celebrity-strewn shows. It’s not just this show – West End theatre in general seems a little too content to bask in an (admittedly lucrative) ghetto. So many British institutions – from the arts to politics – are content to do so.

But theatre can, and should, be a cultural shift changer. It should be creating news events that land productions on the front pages. A first night is an event, certainly, and reviews are important, but if more serious commercial theatre is to find its way into the subconscious landscapes of the nation’s youth, then it needs to be a little more hard-arsed about marketing itself, given that traditional advertising is going through such lean times.

Theatre has done some things very well indeed and there’s no doubt that there’s a lot of money in box office for Yes, Prime Minister – a million quid in advance bookings by all accounts. It’s deservedly going to be a very successful show and the producers have done a brilliant job of providing a financial return for the investors.

But that comfortable sensation of box office wealth can lead to complacency – and that could mean that new opportunities are missed. It would be wonderful if the West End used these riches to try some of the online crowd sourcing tactics to engage the next generation of theatregoers in the same way that Punchdrunk, You Me Bum Bum Train, LIFT and Alex Poots’s Manchester Festival do. They need to remember that are living in an era where a thing or a person survives best if they can communicate successfully to the nation as a whole, not just a certain clique. They need to stir in the next generation, not just the Horlicks sippers.

Which leads me to the second conundrum of the week: Ed Miliband’s first nights as leader of the Labour Party. Labour seems to have taken several steps backwards in electing Ed as the next leader of the party, a man who looks like a truculent Portuguese Wine waiter, or perhaps the manager of an Estonian Lap dancing club. When the Mail and the Sun are so eager to attack and splash the phrase Red Ed throughout any and every article on him and given that he is an awkward, less-than-confident seeming public speaker, all I can see is Labour failing to try and regain the dialogue they had with Britain as a whole in the early days of the New Labour project. Labour has to deal with the Red Ed tag quickly – it’s one of those phrases that will filter seamlessly into the social media and digital subconscious and the British public will find themselves subliminally conditioned unless Labour move fast to stamp out its use.

Whatever you think of them, Philip Gould and Peter Mandelson were immensely effective at controlling output and creating a useful conversation between New Labour and the British public – until the relationship was indelibly tainted by their use of spin to manoeuver the country into an unpopular and illegal war. Prior to Iraq, they had dragged Labour out of the ghetto and, in doing so, helped change the face of British politics. They were mindful of the tiniest details and that is a lesson that mustn’t be forgotten.

Now, you have to be media savvy, cool in front of the cameras and able to hold your own up close. Ed’s unmarried status and his slightly ungainly demeanour is a burden for the party, given that it separates him from the majority of voters. This is not, ultimately, a game changer, but it does allow the opposition to gain an initial foothold. For this reason, David Cameron was clearly more afraid of facing David Miliband across the ballot box. Ed, at a distance from the voters and prone to having easy clichés thrown at him, does not seem likely to be anything like as much a threat. I suspect his struggle for polish will set the party back by 20 years – especially given that he follows Gordon Brown, whose lack of personability was at least leavened by many years in office. Not only is Ed not smooth and slick, he’s not long been an MP.

Clear party divisions are certainly to the fore once agian. New Labour is over: so do we have a right/left divide or do we perhaps have a Tory suited New Labour against Old Labour, finger puppets for the trade union bigwigs, looking like Arthur Mullard in a bad George suit?

Love them or loathe them, Clegg and Cameron are in the smooth and slick fit-for-purpose zone, whereas Ed Miliband and his team need to look hard at examples such as Tony Hayward – a prime instance of a figurehead dragging the whole company into the mire, as he was patently not fit to cope with the media hoo-ha. The head of a big corporate organisation or political party has to be fit for purpose. Can an organisation really afford to elect a leader on values alone in these media savvy times?

Both the Labour Party and the West End have failed to take into consideration the way the new media works, I feel. The 10-minute news cycle and the need for new audiences are paramount and, if any trick is missed and any stone is left unturned, the future will begin to look more and more uncertain.

This feeling was exacerbated by Benedict’s pontificate walking its way into problems of its own making. Who can forget Fr Raniero Cantalamessa making a less than clever comparison between “attacks” on the church, prompted by the sex-abuse crisis, and the sufferings of the Jewish people in the Holocaust. It surely wouldn’t be long before the other wheels fell off the wagon.

After all, how could this dogmatic frontman deal with the list of issues that had large numbers of people speaking out against the church; issues such as Catholic opposition to the distribution of condoms, so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of Aids? Or the promotion of segregated education; denying abortion to even the most vulnerable women; opposing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights, including universal decriminalisation of homosexuality; failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organization?

This was a long list that could sink any ship and Benedict has offended Muslims, Jews, gays and clerical sex-abuse victims in the course of his pontificate. It would take quite a spin-doctor to sort all this out. In short, Pope Benedict was a PR’s nightmare, with the odds firmly stacked against him. It didn’t help that the voices opposing him were experts on giving great sound bite. War horses like Peter Tatchell told the BBC News Channel: “We profoundly disagree with the Pope’s opposition to women’s rights, gay equality and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV.”

The tour did not start well. The Vatican PR minders flooded the market with excruciatingly embarrassing leaflets produced by the papal visit team, which compared the Mass to a “gig”, the Pope to a “headline act” and liturgists to “performers”. Then Cardinal Walter Kasper prompted controversy on the eve of the visit by comparing Britain to a third world country and refusing to apologise for his comments.

Out of nowhere, however, a sombre suit took control; someone inside the organisation had the sound sense to focus on the Pope’s little known strengths. Letting the real Benedict be seen over the course of this visit has changed his image forever. Suddenly we were being sold an old-fashioned but relevant leader. Serenaded by SuBo, he warned against the culture of celebrity. “Become Saints Not Celebs”; “We live in a celebrity culture and young people are often encouraged to model themselves on figures from the world of sport or entertainment.”; “My question for you is this: What are the qualities you see in others that you would most like to have yourselves? What person would you most like to be?”

Whoever promoted this idea deserves beatification. These images played straight into the tabloid heartland. We were now contemplating the image of a spiritual man, not aloof, austere or out of touch. Impromptu walkabouts and classic photo call opportunities yielded traction – much like those that were forged from Pope John Paul II’s 1982 visit. From this point on it became a love in, a religious Glastonbury. The pomp and ritual of the papal tour was backed up by wall-to-wall media and TV coverage and frenzied and adoring crowds. This was old-fashioned hype magnified.

The demonstrators were neutered by a surprisingly assured frontal assault. Protesters were drowned out by the media’s papal positivity. Part of the problem was that, after months of increasingly shrill rhetoric from the anti-Pope movement, during the actual visit they delivered nothing more than a medium-sized demo that never raised itself beyond the predictable and ordinary. There were no surprises, just placard waving negativity – the media agenda had moved far beyond this.

Church commentators have a tendency to suggest that the origins of past PR gaffes by Pope Benedict are linked to the quality of his advisers and the news management of the pontiff. Well, whoever was in charge of this tour pulled off one of the most remarkable PR coups of the last ten years. Benedict charmed his way through very turbulent waters. The pièce de résistance was to convince the sceptics, with his heartfelt words of sorrow during mass at Westminster Cathedral, that he sincerely wants to tackle the “unspeakable crimes” of paedophile priests, which were covered up for so long by the church. Game, set and match – for this tour at least.

I doubt this extravaganza will have changed his image forever, but it is a salutary lesson for PR folk. No matter how desperate the cause, there is always hope that you can turn events around. There are occasions we don’t need to reinvent or restructure, just capitalize on the opportunities at our disposal. “Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie / Which we ascribe to heaven.”

Mel Gibson’s everywhere, in stories relating to the tapes that are allegedly of him violently, angrily haranguing the mother of his youngest child, Oksana Grigorieva, in racist, sexist and vulgar terms. It smacks of a put-up job to me, but it’s a story that will run and run.

Lindsay Lohan, in case you missed it, is also in trouble, serving ninety days in jail for drink-driving offences. If you were judging by the amount of comment and analysis the story’s getting, you’d expect her to have been found guilty of triggering an unprovoked nuclear attack on the Falkland Islands or something similar. Not that Lohan will serve her time – the latest reports suggest that she could serve as little as nine days “because of overcrowding”.

Meanwhile, Rachel Uchitel (Tiger Woods’s mistress) has joined Celebrity Rehab – despite the fact that it has been revealed she has no addiction (home wrecking doesn’t count). Since meeting the show’s doctor, a story has started to spin out into the news that she has a pill addiction, to the prescription drug Ambien. It’s intriguing to discover that Donald Trump, of all people, fired her from the Celebrity Apprentice show because she was appearing on too many other reality shows – perhaps he had spotted her genuine addiction to fame.

What’s fascinating is how far these stories have spread into the American mainstream. These celebrity stories are being poured over by thousands of commentators, from attorneys to councillors (although there are no publicists – they’re all too careful to bite the sort of hands that are feeding them vast amounts of cash I suspect) but what is shocking is that even Time magazine is commissioning features – notably on the psychology behind Mel Gibson’s rage.

The appetite for showbiz is vast in America and is beginning to eclipse the serious news. I thought this obsession would have begun to abate by now, but it’s growing – the feeding frenzy gathers ever more vultures and hyenas. Now you don’t have to be an A Lister to get the CNN treatment in the USA, as Rachel Uchitel and Oksana Grigorieva have proved – they are part of a growing number of very minor celebrities using their connections to get as far up the greasy pole of fame as possible.

There are no genuine stars left as a consequence. The true talent being employed these days is the creation of compelling personal narratives and who can wear them best. Do we care what stars do on screen when the celebrity storyline overpowers box office appeal in these creatively lean times. Infamy equals megabucks – but anyone seeking it really should remember the one lesson that can be learned from Carry on Cleo: “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all it got it infamy!

The debate was well attended; over two thirds full. Joining me to argue for the proposition were Max Clifford and the retiring Union president, Jonathan Laurence. Opposing the motion were Times journalist Hugo Rifkind, showbiz writer Zoe Griffin and James McQuillan, who appeared on The Apprentice.

The other speakers last night went for a comic interpretation of the motion. My technique was more serious-minded, more Old Testament – Quentin Tarantino fans might have deduced I was trying to mimic Samuel L Jackson’s famous biblical Pulp Fiction speech.

I was attempting to play devil’s advocate as well as being more deliberately, obviously provocative. Max was off-the-cuff languid and crammed his speech with career anecdotes. He opened by defending good Reality TV – no surprise, as his chief paymaster is Simon Cowell.

The others were a mixed bag, going for laughs. Hugo Rifkind, the leader writer for the Times, was very good, and reminded the room of some of the bad stuff. He went for Max as the real reason for the negative residue from reality TV, suggesting that Max has promoted and created many poor role models.

Zoe Griffin praised the stars that Reality TV has bred, highlighting Ben Fogle and Myleene Klass, as well praising the revenue Reality TV has generated for the GNP. I wasn’t all that sure about her argument, but she looked great in a fab frock. James McQuillan was pure stand up and self-deprecation – he treated the whole night as if it was a task on The Apprentice.

I am pleased to report Jonathan, Max and I went away winners by 5 votes – a very tight call. Winning, I am told, is a significant tick on the CV – this is, after all, the oldest and one of the most prestigious debating societies in the world.

Below is the transcript of the speech I gave.

President, ladies and gentlemen – good evening.

The very fact that Max Clifford is prepared to publicly bite the hand that feeds him is a measure of the seriousness of the situation our society now finds itself in.

There have always been celebrities, of course. Every culture under the sun reveres fame. Heracles or Odysseus, John Lennon or Joan of Arc – we know without doubt that certain people’s astonishing adventures, thoughts, ideas, poems, novels or battles will live on throughout the ages.

But it is becoming harder and harder for these people to be heard over the slew and spew of information in a world that runs on instant access

So what has changed? What is different about modern celebrity that makes it so uniquely corrosive?

Let me take you back to 1834, when that true genius of celebrity, PT Barnum, moved to New York and discovered the astounding commercial potential of the human freak show. Today, we may disapprove of exhibiting physically deformed men and women for profit.

But I ask you: is Jeremy Kyle any different?

And by Jeremy Kyle, I mean Jerry Springer, the opening rounds of the X Factor and everything else in this degrading morass of reality TV that a British crown court judge aptly called: “a morbid and depressing display of dysfunctional people whose lives are in turmoil.”

There can be little doubt that so-called “reality” television – an oxymoron if ever there was one – is responsible for this perversion.

The gospel of Reality Television is easy to understand. Everyone can be a celebrity. No skills are necessary. And low emotional IQ is a major advantage.

Today’s get-known-quick generation think that fame is an end in itself and that work is for losers. The Reality TV generation seek notoriety in the mistaken belief that it is the same thing as eminence, distinction or achievement.

They have been conned.

Reality TV is a reductive force, which exists in a self-serving media bubble – a cosy pact between format owners and media barons. Now, if that were all it is, that would be bad enough – a modern-day equivalent of Barnum’s freak show… unedifying, but pretty harmless in small doses.

But that is far from its true nature.

In this shallow and foetid Petri dish, we are growing a phoney society. One where 14 year old girls can appear on daytime TV to tell the world that their admiration of Katie Price is so great that they are being remodelled to look like her – because they believe that this alone will make them famous!

Please note, in passing, that beauty is almost always placed at a premium as a culture collapses.

Indeed, it was Eleanor Roosevelt who remarked that:

“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”

On this logarithmic scale, our Reality TV-plagued society is surely due to disappear up its own neocortex.

Psychologist Jean M. Twenge cites a telling indicator in her book Generation Me. In the 1950s, she says, just twelve percent of teens age fourteen to sixteen agreed with the statement: “I am an important person.” Yet by the late 1990s, seven times that number—eighty percent—of teens said they agreed with it.

Of course one needs belief in oneself to do well, to become more than the sum of your parts – but this rampant “self-esteem” is in truth narcissism by another name.

And as I think we can all agree, the seemingly easy route to fame that Reality TV affords is opium to the narcissist’s addiction. We risk breeding an entire generation that doesn’t understand, or want to understand, that nothing worth having comes easily.

In the ten mind-numbing years since Big Brother appeared on our screens, Reality TV has become a major force in our society. It feeds people’s hopes and dreams with a progression of sound bites that illuminate nothing but a phoney ersatz nirvana. Beyond our shores, the West is spreading a ‘fame virus’, seemingly unaware of the spread and effects of the contagion, which by any measure is now a pandemic. Countless children and young adults across the globe are desperate to “live the dream”, unaware that they aren’t even dreaming of a life.

Where, then, are the real heroes? When society genuflects toward plasticated icons of fame, they cannot see real heroes. They miss out on the subtler role models, can see no positive illustrations of value, of worth. And this, too, is one more consequence of Reality TV culture (another oxymoron). It makes it less likely for anyone with genuine, hard-earned talents to make an impact on the world at large.

Ladies and gentlemen, the motion tonight is well-worded

Wretched.

What an appropriate description for our current national psyche.

Perhaps in a country where trade and industry have been reduced to a trickle, where blue collars have nearly all been bleached white, there is little else for the young to do but dream of glory in what seems the best way available. That, at least, is understandable.

Less pardonable is an education system that plays along with this mass deception. I, for one, believe that our children deserve better.

But where will this end?

As a culture, we appear to be moving into a world run on Reality TV rules, insane prospect though that is. Our religion is celebrity. Our sense of community has been reduced to slots on a TV scheduler’s spreadsheet. Our conversation is piped to us via the tabloid media. All plastic, and all thoroughly wretched.

Meanwhile, we are losing the richness of life to a monochrome, reductive view of the world where too many people have been lead to believe by media moguls and TV producers that they too can be demi-gods, without putting in the work or even deserving the worship.

We live in a culture that agrees with Keats that Beauty is Truth.

However, we seem to have forgotten the second part of the famous close to Ode to a Grecian Urn: that Truth is Beauty, also.

Truth, today, is lost in a manufactured version of reality populated by beautiful, synthetic people. And the world suffers for it as more and more strive to be perfect, useless people whose only ability appears to be rich, pretty and unhappy.

Historian C.D. Odell claimed that: “the freaks of the dime museum served the purpose of raiding dull persons from the throws of their inferiority complexes”. Freaks served to boost the punter’s self esteem. The same could be said of watching Jeremy Kyle, but for the fact that so many people watch and decide that they will go on the show to claim their moment of fame – amplifying their internal deformities to please the audience.

Reality TV is, I believe, a tranquilizer for the masses, as the freak shows were in the dime museum days. But instead of people thinking ‘thank god I’m not like that’, they are now thinking ‘it could be me’ and they go out of their way to get chosen for reality TV shows. They freak themselves up to have a better chance of getting on the show.

The divide between rich and poor is bigger than it’s been in a very long time at the moment, but the overriding mood is apathy. Where once people rioted – against the poll tax, in Toxteth and Brixton – due to high level of discontent – they are now opiated by Reality TV. It has produced apathy amongst the young.

Where once you had to be talented to be famous and make money, now you don’t.

Literally anybody has a chance at being picked for a reality TV show and with that comes a certain fame and capacity to earn money – for a little while. The “ it could be you” phenomenon drives the apathy to fight back and reduces the need to have any opinion about our society. Governments won’t change anything because we are given a (false) sense of hope which keeps up down.

And consider this.

Consider it and weep.

More young people have voted on TV shows such as Big Brother and the X Factor than vote in major political elections.

You may be wondering whether I’m over-egging it. Whether, in fact, Reality TV has some beneficial side effects that I’m concealing from you? As entertainment, surely it must at least make us happy?

Actually, no. It drives young people and children to be more self-obsessed, more beautiful, more perfect, more grown up and more miserable in an attempt to gain fame and money.

In a 2007 Unicef survey, more than a quarter of the British children polled (27%) agreed with the statement: “I often feel depressed.”

What made children saddest, in this survey, was their appearance. Almost a fifth, of both sexes, were unhappy with how they looked. A study by the Girl Guides recently discovered that 46% of girls aged 11 to 16 would consider cosmetic surgery and that girls started to find fault with their appearance as early as 10 or 11. Reality TV has created a generation that believe fame and celebrity is their birthright and who cannot function properly because they feel they must make themselves look better to achieve all they desire.

One thing is certain; our moral compass has found a new magnetic field; one that points out a new slant on Oscar Wilde’s famous epigram: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

This is a generation growing up hooked on fast story lines and an optimistic, unrealistic view of reality. A generation growing up believing that they are in the stars and barely registering that they are staring straight into the gutter and have been for years.

I urge you to vote in favour of tonight’s motion.

It was a rather curious and disappointing night; most of the questions from the floor were from people seeking insight via anecdote and I found myself missing the grillings I got from wannabe journalists 15 years ago about the nature of PR. The media has changed, without doubt – celebrity has come to be a sop they use to send us to sleep easily at night, a sort of weak-horlicks fairytale with all the calories and morals removed.

When it comes to celebrity, the media are too often an industry dependent on lives going wrong so they can print half truths and soap operas. The modern media can’t seem to find – or find the time for – the voices of those contributing something of worth to society. Everything is too prearranged. All those bright young things who wanted to be journalists now want to be in PR, as there’s always money to be made there.

But critical opinion is being lost. Does no one want to know how photos of John Terry and his wife in Dubai – which has strict privacy laws – were taken? It had to be by careful arrangement but no one questioned this last night. Everybody knows everything and nothing – the useful details are lost beneath a swath of cosy anecdote.

Debate is at an all time low – it is not even fashionable in politics, as Gordon Brown’s giving over of himself to the personal via the medium of his TV interview with Piers Morgan the other day proves. That and the fact that the political parties are all trying to bag celebs to help win the upcoming election (click here to see a piece on this in the Telegraph for which I gave a quote) rather than debate and think their way out of their problems.

I’m well aware that the world is constantly changing, as it should, but to have young wannabe publicists and journalists sidestep entirely a proper discourse and just accept the nature of things as they are on the surface is disturbing. There’s always money to be made – asking questions won’t, in the long run, stem the flow of that income. The power of questions is that, by questioning, one can change things. True constructive analysis and debate is the only way for the media, PR and the world to move forward – equilibrium need not mean stultification.