Hall was somehow savaged by a panel which contained, amongst others, professionally ineffectual wall hanging Louis Spence and Chiles himself, the world’s least threatening man. Even worse: she has achieved the exact opposite of her presumed aim. Following her constant, whining ubiquity over the past few days, the only sane response is to actually feel sorry for Clarkson. She’s unlikely to make the money she wants, but even if she does, it’ll be pretty tainted now.

Rumour has it that Hall has fired Clifford following the debacle. It’s fascinating to me that this is the conclusion people have drawn: much more likely he’s quietly given her the shove. He sat next to her, blandly besuited like a court-appointed attorney in a police drama, ashen faced as she shot herself in the foot time after time. An attempted gag in which she turned the initials used to refer to her case under the injunction (a.m.m vs h.x.w) into a faux-provocative acronym fell flatter than Spence’s washboard abs. ‘Adulterous Motor Mouth vs. Hurt Ex Wife’, if you’re interested. Cue slow clap.

Not content with total sense of humour failure, she saw fit to run through the PR handbook of toxic ideas. The nadir? She came closer than anyone has for a while to evoking the Clinton Defence: asked whether she could prove the alleged affair, she replied simply ‘what’s proof?’.

Hall has been given a short sharp shock and taught a valuable lesson. Whether you feel you have a story to tell or not is irrelevant. Even if you think you’ve been wronged, you won’t be safe. Despite your indignation at a court gagging or whatever other justification you have,  as soon as you go to Max Clifford and release a publicity narrative which, despite Hall’s protestations, can only be branded a ‘kiss and tell’ by the tabloids, any gains you make will be tainted forever.
The price of this kind of fame is high, and Hall is paying it already. It’s a vicious circle of course: the greater her frustration, and the more she feels the need to defend herself, the worse she comes across. Her appearance on TSNS was defined by her manner: humourless, unsmiling, self-serving. Her claim that her book was never originally intended to feature details of the much discussed affair is somewhat dubious. Tellingly, it was backed up only by insistences that it would prove interesting solely on the basis of the revelations it offered into her clearly rather tiresome life.

What Hall should have realised is that, as soon as she appears on television she’s up against people with a script behind them and an audience already onside. Chiles is hardly the greatest humourist on British TV, but he got some big laughs at her expense, particularly when he referred to Clarkson’s considerable material wealth. Both literally and metaphorically, the laughter of studio audiences will render any sincere points Hall has to offer inaudible.

The lesson here is clear: kiss and tells never offer the gazillions they promise, and what pecuniary reward they do carry comes with a heavy burden. Hall’s punishment is almost classical in its irony. Like Sisyphus and his Stone, she is doomed to toil forever. Each new protestation of innocence and search for vindication will breed new accusations, and the process will fuel itself.

What is it with snack moguls? First Fredrich Baur, retail genius and inventor of the iconic ‘Pringles’ can, had his ashes buried in one of his beloved crisp receptacles back in 2008, and now this fantastic news item from West, presumably a sight that roughly resembled Doritos’ stoner student target customer after a big night in. The real genius of the retail surpremo is represented by these almost mythic funerals: these were guys who truly lived the brand, who integrated their lives and their behaviour into what they were communicating. There is something unimaginably inspirational about these two men, who know who to grab column inches even from beyond the grave.

Their heritage is rich. When Gordon Selfridge came to London, he made a fortune out of the women’s lib movement by promoting luxury shopping as a lifestyle choice, a statement of freedom: he was unafraid to be a huge character and to consciously attract huge characters. He encouraged women to look at his freedom, to look at that of his wife, and to demand this for themselves via the medium of their wallets.

Throughout his career, he ran his store less as a business than a story factory. He invented the clapometer, he maintained extraordinary contacts throughout the national media, he orchestrated fabulous window displays with top celebrities. Selfridge, like West and Baur after him, understood that being a true brand ambassador means treating each day as a news item, investing each step you take with narrative flair. He was Selfridges, and he lived by one of his most powerful maxims: “People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.”

Even going back as far as my idol P.T. Barnum, we find the tradition of the showman retailer. Before the FeeJee Mermaid, Tom Thumb and his great travelling roadshow, Barnum was a store clerk, and apparently an excellent salesman. This stuff isn’t coincidence: the retail world represents the beating heart of what all communications and sales industries do. On the shop floor, it’s sale or nothing, and it’s a cradle that has taught some of the best the art of haggling, cajoling, dazzling, even deceiving. What’s more, whole retail brands have been built on those personalities that rise to the top of such a world.

There is nothing more inspiring than having a marketing mind at the top of the tree: when a showman is running an outfit, their communications strategy isn’t something pasted on top of a rigid corporate interior. Their very essence, all of their activity, is informed by the spirit of the big risk and the hard sell.

The question is, where are the inheritors of this tradition? In these days of corporate retail groups, where shareholders reign supreme and ideas often have to pass through so many hands that they’re killed off before delivery, is there room for another Arch West? I see a lot of truly ambitious kids in the course of my work, I only hope some of them resist the pressure, keep the fire, and remember even at the age of 97 that a funeral is just another stage to be mastered. As Ken Campbell, another recently departed showman, once said: “the anagram of funeral is real fun”. Let’s hope that we in the commercial world don’t all now take ourselves too seriously to remember this.

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.

I welcome the site – it’s not something good publicists should fear. In the spirit of transparency, I’m very comfortable to declare that on occasions I’ve let my imagination run riot. Once – or maybe even twice! – I have ensured that a dismal fact has not stood in the way of making a story work. Then, in an age when there were more journalists than PR, it was tough generating ink.

The ink-generating challenge has now come full circle. Bright young PR things outnumber the journalists. I for one believe the press release is an endangered species, thanks to misuse. The media owners, under pressure to slow an inevitable decline, have cast out costly experienced journos and replaced them with more cost-effective, energetic drones who can multitask as if they were born to it. These drones are fed into the ten-minute news cycle, which spins and churns and greedily welcomes a helping hand. Now, if the story sounds good, well hey; it was true at the time.

Laziness will always be a problem but it is too easy to lay the blame at the door of the journalists entirely, especially when the pressures they face are so immense. This is why I’m a little unsure about the tactics of Chris Atkins from Starsuckers, as reported in the Guardian, who helped promote the website by setting up fake websites and pushing fake press releases about dubious products onto the media (such as the Penazzle, a penis decoration, or the chastity garter for unfaithful wives). It seems to me that the journalists involved fell victim to a persuasive hoax and then rehashed the press releases a little too exactly. Atkins’s approach seems akin to threshing corn with a sledgehammer.

Press releases should not be unthinkingly sent out or unthinkingly repeated verbatim. I keenly hope that churnalism.com will help to eradicate the mind-numbingly dull prefabricated, brand-driven drivel that’s punted out by a collection of poorly equipped agencies. The level of noise makes it hard for the true craft of the publicist to flourish. The press release, for all that it is a 130-year-old mechanism, is still a useful one if it is not mistreated and abused. I hope it lives on.

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.

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.

West has been letting rip on Twitter with unrelenting detail about himself. He has picked a fight with a journalist from the LA Times music blog who had the temerity to accidentally miss out a word from the title of his album but the incident that generated the most ire was his use of a robot to pump out 300 tweets in a few minutes containing lyrics and some nasty invective.

With a lot of people complaining about his bombardment and suggesting that it was “time to give that ego some beautyrest”, it’s clear that Kanye has been digging his own grave in public.

You only have to go to his Twitter site to see the lurid details. As Grace Dent put it in a tweet yesterday morning: “kanye is actually a complete twitter bellend. they should suspend his account for spamming about himself.” He has proved that a sleb can disengage a fan base in mere moments.

Other celebrities take note – the world really is watching. Take your publicist’s advice and quell the urge to pick fights with the world. And please find something to talk about other than yourself.

The big question racing round the media and the net is: did Jaffe walk or was he pushed? But in an age when the big news organizations are repositioning themselves as verifiers of the news, given the predominance of the blogosphere and the Twitterati as breakers of the news, it’s never going to be as cut and dried as that.

According to RadarOnline, and quoted in the Mail, Jaffe has stated: “The case was so all encompassing in terms of my time and the strict orders by the judge. I have other clients in serious crises who require my time.”

Reading between the lines, I can’t help but suspect that representing Oksana Grigorieva must have been tough – the story is wall to wall in America and there are any number of people getting in on the act, trying to make a fast buck out of the tabloid feeding frenzy.

Given that the internet is a remorseless story pump (imagine the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico before BP capped it, but replace the oil with a heady brew of gossip, scandal and press releases), any publicist dealing with a story as big as this one is likely to be on it 24 hours a day. That’s not a situation in which one can be strategic, as the constant flurry of rumour, counter-rumour and media theorizing would mean that everything has to be dealt with now, this second, without a moment to plan.

For a publicist, working in a situation like this is akin to throwing one’s career into a spin drier – there is no control to be had, especially when both the leading players seem to be dead set on making each other’s lives extremely difficult which, by extension, makes the lives of those working with them extremely difficult too. A good publicist doesn’t dish the dirt on their client, not even an ex-client whom they parted with acrimoniously.

Not that one is ever likely to find out precisely what is going on behind the scenes – there’s more than enough bullshit flying around to obscure that nicely. Better that a good story gets out, anyway – the truth in these instances is usually pretty dull.

There is also little money in this game. Very few tabloid figures can afford to remunerate for the sort of 24/7 council and strategic advice that the Mel/Oksana situation demands. Characters who allow their lives to be defined by opinion and the lust of the crowd will undoubtedly be terrible clients. It usually takes about 48 hours to come to that realisation.

And, most importantly, a sensible 60-year-old cherishes his life over and above high emotional spin cycle. Whisper it, who needs a toxic client. There is no glamour. There is only the horror.

This is a story that highlights the lack of investment in PR at the highest level. There’s an awful lot of bollocks talked about stories that are ‘so important’ that you can do trades with the papers on them, with shadowy publicists portrayed as Fagin types hand-rubbing and smirking in the background. This is mostly absurd – an exercise in scapegoat making.

A good publicist is counsellor and conscience – a Hollywood hybrid of shrink and media hound – and should protect their client. They have always been looking to the long game rather than the easy buck; the reinvention of the client to keep them in the limelight for years rather than to just take a cut from one hefty payment and then move on.

The media is profit-driven – these stories would wither up and die if people simply stopped buying the papers that carried them. People have complained that the Mail on Sunday is ‘ruining England’s chances’ in the World Cup and of hosting the World Cup in eight years’ time. The papers are after a profit; they would be forced to write something new if the people who complained stopped buying the tabloids, instead of moaning and then meekly buying up the next salacious crumbs of gossip.

The power to stop this is in the hands of the public – you choose what stories you want to read. I expect that circulation will creep up in the wake of this story, however – despite the litany of complaints.

It is depressing, too, that people are willing to go to the lengths that Jacobs has – what was she thinking? What possessed her? The “flame-haired 37-year-old with an impressive academic background” will surely rue the day she sold her story. Football tribalism carries a long collective memory for hurts and she has been set up as cannon fodder for this story.

If the FA’s spin-meisters don’t get the World Cup bid back on track, she will surely end up being seen as Eve to Triesman’s addled, buffoonish Adam and will end up suffering the same fate as Faria Alam.

It’s sad that old men, going into high office, still let power rush through them like a particularly potent, heady aphrodisiac. Perhaps they should be castrated before they take the role – or at least be forced to take bromide tea for the duration of their roles. And if that’s too extreme, perhaps they should have a good PR person embedded with them whilst they operate in public life.

The phrase ‘public life’ is a misnomer if ever there was one – the more one is in it, the less one knows about the lives of the public, which allows the sort of foolish mistakes that Triesman has made to thrive. The corridors of power are dark and shadowy. A good PR person could throw light on the way the world works and, most importantly, protect the power-crazed duffers from themselves.

And if that seems too much of an expense, why not just bring more women into such positions of power? I am certain that far fewer stories like these would crop up if there were more women as chief execs. But can you imagine the faces of the FA if you tried to push more women into their corridors of power? Not to mention those of the journalists at the Mail on Sunday…

Amen.

Adam Horovitz

Written after hearing that a chain of hotels frequented by celebrities, which are to be featured in a reality show, have asked to use The Fame Formula as a replacement for the Gideon’s Bible – something for the down-at-heel Z Lister to turn to for inspiration.