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.

Of course, the real PR world would make a pretty poor comedy. Sure, it’s on one level a creative industry, and there are moments of brilliance (as well as the odd rambunctious, explosive event, one or two of which I’ll admit to orchestrating). However, there’s a good deal of daily grind- the PR consultant’s agenda is laden with stress, and often driven by trickier clients who expect the earth, want it right away and then demand precise figures to confirm its existence.

Needless to say, if I turned up to a lunch with one of my corporate clients clutching a Stolly Bolly, sporting a beehive and spouting a series of irritating catchphrases, I’d not long keep the account. Though I’m sure I’d look pretty marvellous.

Yet that’s hardly an excuse for selling a bunch of tired clichés of lavish party excess and toppling hi-heeled fools. Absolutely Fabulous successfully warped public, anecdotal opinion of PR because it latched on to an unavoidable fact- that networking and events form a significant part of the publicist’s working life- and used this as a way in to push an image of PR of one long, loud, particularly boring party. In reality, most events the PR has to attend aren’t any more fun than the morning planning meeting. As anyone in communications will tell you, work is work- in or outside the office.

This stuff is particularly damaging when it harms serious professionals. Lynne Franks was stitched up when her friends decided to brandish a caricature of her for laughs- a decision that said more about people in the TV industry than in PR. Franks’s name cannot now be mentioned without a reference to the show following shortly after. It’s a shame, given that Franks’s career is iconic.

A pioneering female businessperson, she built a business from her kitchen table, sold it for a cool £6million, and now runs the SEED network which is doing some pretty interesting stuff for women in the business world- their b.hive female business spaces are more or less unique.

It’s not a cultural trope that stopped with Ab Fab either: ‘The Thick of It’s Malcolm Tucker and the feckless PR director in BBC’s recent Olympic satire ‘Twenty Twelve’ are two direct descendants. With the communications industries currently under continual flux and re-assessment, PR is emerging as the most valid, serious way of tapping into public conversation. Before the industry’s reputation is shattered once again by the show’s return, individual agencies, professionals and the CIPR need to think carefully about the way they present what they do to the public.

They need to think about how best to sell exciting PR while disposing of the cliché that dogs them. Publicity is dynamic, but if it’s good it’s also highly professional: fully planned, intricately executed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to attend a lengthy meeting in a gloomy boardroom. Rest assured the consequences will not be hilarious.

I will be outing some of Nottage’s darker and more dubious practices, some of which didn’t appear in the book, and illustrating who it affected and how. It will take in ambitious actresses, pornography from the Roaring 20’s, carnival freaks, forgotten Hollywood B listers and even a water-skiing lion.

For anyone who doesn’t know what Peachy Coochie is, it’s a night of lectures, each of which take just over six minutes. Each lecture comes with 20 slides and the speaker discusses each slide for 20 seconds. A Peachy Coochie night will inject information right into your brain so painlessly that you don’t even realise you’ve learned something.

So my Peachy Coochie on Nottage will be a 6 minute lesson about the past, as well as a bittersweet warning to all PR people. And there’ll be so much more to hear too, given that Rachel Mars, Harry Meadows, Deborah Levy and Julian Baker are also taking part.

Click here for more information and online booking.

In the brave new world run to the tune of the ten minute news cycle, where traditional media has been reduced to merely commenting on and affirming stories that are broken on Twitter and in the blogosphere, almost at the speed of thought, and where advertising budgets have been slashed down to the stump, what else is there but PR?

I’ll be discussing Captivating Narrative and how compelling and effective stories can be utilised to unite social media, traditional media and word of mouth into one powerful, viral jet-stream of information to promote brands, stars or anything one wants to apply them to and how truth plays second fiddle to manufactured fiction.

Captivating Narrative is the next step up from the public conversation that brands must maintain in the internet age if they are to survive. Brands and stars live or die on the way they are perceived and if they can control their own narrative and make it fascinating, they are far more likely to survive. A compelling story draws people in and spreads more easily by word of mouth. They can apply to anything!

I’ll be dissecting the image and reputation of some of the biggest brands and names going, as well as looking at the people who manipulate them. The show examines brands and personalities as diverse as Toyota, Al Qaeda, Paris Hilton, Somali Pirates, the England football team, Tony Hayward Joseph Goebbels and Asda.

To book tickets, click here.

“…if a new era of transparency throws light on the secretive deals struck in the boardrooms of the BBC, insiders warned of dramatic changes to the way it does business that could set it on a collision course with its stars and their agents.

“‘There would be an absolute feeding frenzy,’ says Mark Borkowski, the entertainment industry publicist and founder of Borkowski PR. ‘It would spark a war between the media and celebrities over the amount the BBC pays and suddenly agents will need to convince the media their guy has value.’”

There have been some hugely influential, wonderful and funny booze adverts over the years – just think of the often-surreal Guinness campaigns, or of Carling and Heineken’s best efforts. It would be a terrible shame to lose these creative campaigns and some of the minds behind them to a health and safety-regulated puritanical streak.

It seems to me that the campaign to ban the booze ads is little more than a PR exercise designed to sidestep the sort of potential legal claims that the tobacco industry have been dealing with. There are better ways of reducing binge drinking – heavy fines and policemen empowered to breathalyse people whether they are driving or not would be a start, as would fixing the price of alcohol in the supermarkets. If a drunken lout is arrested and is found to be over the limit apply heavy penalties and heavy fines of £1000 and more. This should apply equally to people driving home from the pub after a few too many, whether they’ve hurt someone or not.

But banning the advertising would a terrible shame – the effects of the adverts are often as pleasurable than the drink they’re selling. Good advertising is something to enjoy, in much the same way as a fine wine, a good whisky, a chilled lager or a well kept ale; sparingly. Everything in moderation – including booze advertising!

They have an enormous number of silent supporters waging their PR war for them, and some not-so-silent ones. Take the NeoCon pollster and political consultant Frank Luntz, for example. After the Gulf War, he advised American Jewish leaders to incorporate mention of Iraq into every mention made of Israel because “Saddam will remain a powerful symbol of terror to Americans for a long time to come. A pro-Israeli expression of solidarity with the American people in their successful effort to remove Saddam will be appreciated.”

Israel has a global network of people helping them ride any PR storm. There is always a PR storm and they always seem to ride it. After Gaza residents, in the wake of the Haiti disaster, started a well-documented campaign to send money to Haiti because they were ‘in the same state’, a number of bloggers reporting this were attacked and, in some cases, silenced.

Look at America’s limp response to the attack on the aid ships – in international waters and so an international incident. The White House said that the US “deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained” and that US officials were “currently working to understand the circumstances surrounding this tragedy”.

If that doesn’t suggest a whole raft of lobbyists to appease behind the scenes, nothing does. And the trouble is that nearly all the PR war is waged almost entirely behind locked doors. It would be interesting to see what changed if transparency were demanded in such matters. I doubt some of the PR advisers, lobbyists and flaks working for Israel would be able to take the international flack if they were exposed to scrutiny.

Speaking of transparency, it’s interesting to see that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has become the ‘BP Oil Disaster’ – such disasters rarely get named after the big companies. They tend to be named after the place they happen. That BP appear to be taking the blame on the chin is either a big PR turnaround on their part or proof that there is nowhere for them to hide. Either way it marks a sea change in their approach to blame. Sadly, it also marks a huge change in the chemistry of the sea off the coast of America. I hope they’re as quick to deal with that as they are to take the blame.

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.

If you never heard the podcast, it’s still available by clicking here. It’s also well worth subscribing to the On the Record podcast – there’s always something interesting to listen to…