Posts Tagged ‘Piers Morgan’

Back in February, I wrote an entry about the ‘lost art of the long lunch’, which lamented an unfortunate consequence of the modern, social media-dominated environment and its ten minute news cycle. With most conversations now conducted via mouthpiece or screen, and quickly at that, it strikes me that the generations of hacks cutting their teeth from the late 80s onwards lack the highly sensitive interpersonal skills of their forbears.

The Fleet Street era of colossal expense accounts and booze-fuelled revelations couldn’t last, of course, but it had one thing going for it. When devious tactics were employed to extract information, more often than not they were employed face to face. It was open warfare of the kind where the loser probably deserved what was coming to them, if only because they’d had a few too many brandies with dessert. Perhaps if a generation of scribblers were not chained to their desks in the Wapping Gulag, the need for hacking might have taken a back seat. Worshipping the powers of a lunchtime claret, and its ability to make a contact sing, might have suppressed the lust for the dark arts.

Journalists have always done whatever it takes to get information. Nobody in the media industry has any illusions about that. Look at how readily Kelvin Mackenzie implicitly defended many of those involved in the phone hacking scandal in his 2010 spat with Chris Bryant, for instance. The point is, though he can sympathise with those who did, Mackenzie didn’t resort to the kind of invasive tactics employed at NI publications in the late 90s and early 00s when he edited the Sun. Sure, he didn’t have some of the technology, but he also didn’t have to. Read the rest of this entry »

Piers Morgan dismisses the idea that the British Secret services ever murdered anyone. In a new movie documentary feature, Unlawful Killing, Piers suggests, if MI5 don’t kill the baddies, what’s the point of them?

I feel that the new Royal couple may have a similar problem. I might have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, but they seem to be playing down much of the glamour that is surely an essential part of the royal schtick. Kate Middleton is subtly selling the idea she will be nothing like her deceased mum-in-law to be (there’s a simpler way, Kate – don’t promote landmine charities!).

What is the point of royalty if there is no glamour? The Royal spin machine is much more professional that it was thirty years ago, but that very spin cycle seems to be rinsing out the parts that make royalty royal. They balance media relations with some tough, side of stage legal rottweilers and these snarling beasts control the minds of editorial ambition. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

A week is a long time in politics, so six months equates to an eternity. Just ask David Cameron who, six months ago, looked to be a shoe-in for the next Prime Minister.

I’ve been up in the smoke all week and the conversation, from left and right, is dominated by the possibility that the Tories might not win the election. It’s a simple case of making a couple of mistakes and watching confidence seep away. And the ill-advised Tory poster campaign, featuring an airbrushed David Cameron, is not so much a mistake as it is a PR disaster. Read the rest of this entry »

Accused of not letting slip any details of policies that would be employed should they form the next Government, the Tories came out in surprisingly brave style yesterday, thanks to George Osborne.

He may have the charisma of a financial director of a small engineering firm in Colchester, but Osborne has been the boldest politician on the block this conference season, playing on the Tories’ current popularity to roll out plans for an austere Britain should the Tories come to power.

“After a year in which trust in parliament has been rocked to the foundations, we know that politics must change forever,” he told the Tory faithful. Then, in a definite nod to both the careful PR husbandry of Andy Coulson, the new Cardinal Richelieu of spin, and the needs of the public, he added: ‘We have to be open and transparent with the people we serve.”

It’s a risk, especially for a Tory party riding its first wave of media support in a long time. Not so long ago the Tories would have been very aware of the media looking carefully at the effect on the public of a group of old Etonians asking country to tighten its belt. But with the Sun on their side, this is the first conference that they are feeling confident at – and Osborne has taken a gamble by asking everyone but the poorest Briton to do exactly that to make sure the country gets out of the huge deficit.

Of course, anyone even paying lip-service to transparency in politics at the moment is likely to do well, however unlikely it is that the transparency will last long after power’s been achieved. Osborne, however, knows full well that he is not likely to end up as unpopular as Gordon Brown, whatever happens. We may have seen huge applause for the prime minister and his wife at the Labour conference last week, but a huge percentage of the people clapping, particularly the Balls and Darlings, are likely to have a dagger with Brown’s name on it concealed about their person. They’re all PR savvy enough to not want to be associated with the sinking of Labour and will be working out ways of leaving Gordon holding the baby.

Talking of hidden daggers, I was at the Pride of Britain awards last night and had the pleasure of watching the popular Piers Morgan working the room with ease, wit and a certain amount of grace. He and his partner, Celia Walden, make a very likeable pair – she’s his Michelle Obama.

I fell to wondering what this popularity could mean for his position in the Simon Cowell empire. Piers is getting to be much more popular than he used to be; will Cowell – the alpha male of the X Factory– allow someone on one of his shows to be this genuinely liked?

It’s time to be vigilant – this has all the makings of an epic off-screen soap opera that could run and run. Keep your eyes peeled for the next thrilling installment, coming soon!

The frenetic 48 hours at the end of last week turned into a furiously busy weekend, coping with the response to the Times’ article suggesting that Maynard Nottage was a hoax.
 
I have been fielding calls from producers interested in buying the rights to the Nottage story (there’s at least one director interested in the project, who has an A List star in mind to play the part of Nottage); answering emails of support from a great many people, including Victor Lewis Smith, Piers Morgan and Steve Jaffe; writing a letter of response to the Times (click here to read it) and communicating with Nottage’s surviving family, who have hired PR council in the USA in response to the Times article and will be releasing a statement in the next few days.
 
It’ll be interesting to see where all this goes next. I find it fascinating that people, living in the age of the internet where the ability to access information instantaneously is taken for granted, apply the same logic to the past. Records do not always survive, especially from times of great upheaval. Added to that, one of the main things The Fame Formula documents is the way Hollywood has tried to suppress its ugly side. And Nottage’s excesses are certainly the kind of ugliness that Hollywood would try to suppress.
 
As I mentioned last week on this blog, Harry Reichenbach, who was the most successful publicist of his time, barely merited a mention until a decade or so ago. And take the mysteries surrounding the death of William Desmond Taylor and George ‘Superman’ Reeves, for example, which have never been satisfactorily explained. These were big names in the Hollywood firmament; that a wayward publicist could be eradicated from the official annals of movie history should therefore not be a surprise, given how little publicists were held in regard in the early days of Hollywood and how, even then, they tended not to raise their heads above the parapets of their press releases.