Posts Tagged ‘max clifford’

I took part in the Cambridge Union debate last night, arguing for the proposition ‘This House Believes that Reality TV Represents Everything Wretched about Britain Today’. I underestimated the space, at how steeped in grandeur it is, and found myself more than a little nervous.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

The blogs I’ve been posting over the last few days have stirred up a certain amount of comment – the one on Tiger Woods has even spread as far afield as India, as this article on the India Today website shows.

The blog discussing the debate I participated in on Monday has stirred up some comment too – there’s also a blog from the chair of the event, Trevor Morris, comparing Max Clifford to Marmite, which is well worth a read. It’s on director general of the PRCA Francis Ingham’s blog. Click here to find out more.

I took part in a debate at the University of Westminster last night alongside that wily old fox Max Clifford (the second time I’ve shared a stage with him – it always makes for an interesting experience) and others, discussing Celebrity Brands: Desire, Dollars and Danger?

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. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m taking part in a couple of debates in the next few days. First up is Risky Business: Risk and Reputation, an early morning debate on the nature of risk, this Thursday, February 11th, at the Cass Business School. Given the year just gone and the way the financial crisis has played out, it should be an interesting and possibly heated debate Read the rest of this entry »

The Independent requested my opinion on the hotting up of the Russell Brand and Katy Perry romance – and more particularly the way they are being aggressively pushed into a Brangelina-shaped hole. Or should that be RussKat, as the Independent puts it. To read more, click here…

It seems, of late, that sleaze is a gift worth giving and that it’s for life, not just for Christmas or for politicians. The latest example – the News of the World phone tapping scandal – is, in Variety’s slanguage, a “dramedy”. It has the potential for seriously succulent consequences, which might be deeply costly for News International. The potential scale of the scandal is enormous.

Most agents and celebrities will be trying to find out if Nick Davies’ research is robust, wondering if they are one of the thousand celebrities whose phones were hacked. If nothing else, the alleged espionage will result in a welter of wealthier celebrities – all thanks to Davies’s diligence.

These are dark times for executives in the Wapping gulag. The sound of gnawing of fingernails will do nothing to deaden the relentless hum of prurient, smug outrage from the celebrity commentariat. For some battle-scarred PR flaks it will come as no surprise that the tabloids have deployed the dark arts of espionage to root out succulent showbiz sweetmeats.

But, from my standpoint, I am expecting the hacking scandal to empower prominent celebrities to wreak legal havoc in a bout of retrospective revenge. Wasn’t it Edward Gibbon who said: “Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive”? Celebrities will certainly be riffing on the first part of that quote in the coming months – the genie is about to be escape the bottleneck of secrecy and those affected will almost certainly start suing News International.

I guess that the News of the World will struggle to contain the details of the Taylor settlement, the details of which they have, to date, been able to withhold from the public domain. Once out, however, the paper will be forced to pay out and the ensuing costs will cripple the title. I expect a snowstorm of writs and a couple of spectacular court cases – all of which will make the News of the World look very feeble. Many celebrities will want to follow the Taylor example and will be eager and greedy to extract their own a six figure sums – I know that various high profile legal figures have already attempted to discover who the targets were.

It’s a fact that many misguided public figures feel that their treatment by the likes of News Of the World, who leverage mundane and routine facts and turn them into highly pejorative and prejudicial reports, is entirely unjustified. To achieve monetary reparation for what they see as unfair treatment will certainly be a revenge of sorts. And the paper has played into their hands.

But can you image the chaos the likes of Max Mosley, David Beckham, Gordon Ramsey or even Max Clifford, aggrieved and determined to get some reparation, might create if they can prove that the News of the World has gained access to their phone messages? Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but I’m certain it’ll be heating it up in the microwave of public attention soon enough.

The wrath of a celebrity is impossible to underestimate. There is an apocryphal tale about a celebrity crimper, apoplectic that he had been turned over by the News of the World. To ease the pain he created an effigy of Andy Coulson out of a teddy bear, which he threw it into the bathtub, doused it with lighter fluid, and set it on fire in a fit of voodoo celebrity therapy. Now it is possible that he will be calling Messrs Schillings instead to achieve a more satisfactory – and conventional – form of retribution; a financial sting.

The likely consequence of this potentially seismic activity is that the world of celebrity will have the upper hand in tabloid land in the future. Journalistic research will have to rebooted and the honourable profession will need their own PR to rebuild a tarnished reputation. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

Here is the webcast of the head to head between Max Clifford and myself at the London College of Communications last Tuesday, in nine handy bite-sized chunks. Apologies to anyone who logged in to Ustream in the hope of seeing the debate streamed live – Ustream crashed and prevented us from going ahead.

Part One

Part Two: Andrew reveals his knowledge of football, and Max discusses the difference between ’stars’ and ‘celebrities’

Part Three: Mark begins with an attack on new agents, who lack in skill and who profit by peddling hope.

Part Four: Are reality shows good or bad?

Part Five: Any advice for Gordon Brown?

Part Six: Which begins with Max being asked how he has kept the identity of his bisexual Premiership footballing client out of the media…

Part Seven: Does Max feel guilty about profiting from Jade’s death, or Kerry Katona’s misfortune – or causing misery for other people?

Part Eight: LCC Year 3 PR student Cally Sheard questions Max on whether the public or the media determine the agenda, using the Barrymore story as an example.

Part Nine: Conclusion!

I will be going head to head with Max Clifford to discuss the toxic nature of celebrity at the London College of Communication tonight and, if you don’t have a ticket – they sold out quickly – you’ll be glad to know you haven’t missed out! You can get involved in the heated and controversial debate as it will be streamed live on Ustream.

If you want to see the debate, click on the following link this evening – the show starts at 6 p.m.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Borkowski-Talks

I enjoyed the launch of the Fame Formula paperback at the Riverside Studios at Hammersmith on Wednesday night for many reasons: it’s a great venue, the people who came were interested and interesting, it was good to expound on the brilliance of publicist extraordinaire Russell Birdwell to an audience and it was marvellous to see one of the films he promoted, Nothing Sacred, on a big screen for the first time. And what a film it is!

It may have been made in 1937, but Nothing Sacred still resonates today, thanks to Ben Hecht’s razor sharp script and William Wellman’s ironic, deadpan direction. The film features a disgraced reporter who, desperate to make good with his editor after a series of exposed scams and fake news stories, discovers a girl who is dying of radium poisoning and decides to bring her to New York to be feted by the world.

It’s extraordinary how like the Jade Goody story the film is, but for the fact that Hazel Flagg, played by the luminous Carol Lombard, is not actually dying of cancer. From the ecstatic headlines reporting Hazel’s every move and utterance to the grand plans for a funeral to see her off in style – something she deserves because she is so “brave and vulnerable” – it skewers modern celebrity reporting perfectly.

Nothing Sacred turns the screw on the nature of celebrity ever tighter, right up until the end, despite being made 72 years ago. If you haven’t seen it, you really should. I’d even suggest it should be remade, but it would have to be done by someone with a sharp, satirical eye like Jason Reitman – this is not a film that deserves softening by Hollywood.

Next up on the promotional trail is my head-to-head debate with Max Clifford at the London College of Communication on Tuesday, May 5th at 6 p.m. discussing the toxic nature of modern celebrity. I’m not sure if there are any tickets left, but if you can’t make it, rest assured that the volatile results will be filmed for webcast and recorded for podcast.

Jade Goody’s not cold in her grave and already a “controversial” artist is leeching off her celebrity to generate some quick and dirty PR. News broke in the Hackney Gazette last week that performance artist Mark McGowan is organising a re-enactment of the final hours of Jade Goody’s life.

It’s a pretty typical scam; the two-hour show will feature a performer lying on a bed donning a cardboard box as a head and will also feature artists playing the roles of Jackey Budden, Jade’s mother, her publicist Max Clifford and Jack Tweed, her husband. And, what a surprise, it’s opening in the most pretentious area of artdom – Shoreditch – on May 18th.

McGowan obviously enjoys boosting his name with takes on controversial subject matter – back in 2005 he created a re-enactment of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menzes by the police. To achieve this, he sat in a bath filled with baked beans with chips in his nostrils, and then he went dancing outside Scotland Yard in a pink tutu and a pig mask.

Surely, Mr. McGowan, you can come up with something better this time round? We understand that art is difficult to define, but if the piece on Jade is anything like the Jean Charles de Menzes re-enactment, it will simply be an obvious and, more importantly, insensitive ploy to get publicity for an otherwise unknown and, seemingly, totally talentless person. Sensationalism and exploitation are easy to achieve – it takes a certain kind of genius to create something really infectious and inspiring out of the misery of others.

It does not appear that your show will be art in the traditional sense of skill or mastery, nor does it look like you have any intention of stimulating thought or emotion. This seems to me to be merely a vehicle for the artist (and I use that word loosely) to communicate his desperation to be noticed.

Well, I suppose it’s suckered me in to giving it ink.