Let's Keep Things Simple

4 Fuks Saké

This blog has moved and changed names.

Please head to 4 Fuks Saké for more of the same.

Goodnight and God bless.

I Beg Your Pardon...?

If someone set me a brief, with the eventual measure of success being what has come out of Suzanne Shaw's mouth, I would calmly leave the room and wish them all the best.

Suzanne - Dancing On Ice champ - was asked who she favoured between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Her response: "I'm going to be honest. I've never heard either of these names before."

How? What?

Someone please explain.

Making Money Out Of Fat People

GMTV (the UK's version of breakfast TV on a sofa) is pleasant and nice. All the presenters clean their teeth, have sex once a week never stooping to use pornography, and don't do anything to upset anyone ever. A couple of weeks ago, GMTV rounded up 5 fat people into a pen and took them off to a cold island off the Scottish coast. Called 'Fat Club' or something, they were packed off to a retreat at the expense of a variety of pharmaceutical and nutritional companies. The watching population sat at home tucking into its Frosties, and thanked God it wasn't them, patting its collective belly contentedly.

Tabloid supplements, celebrity supermarket magazines are up to it too - reproducing the same seared tuna and green bean recipes plus the exercise tips, week in week out. We're a fat nation, and there's money to be made from offering up a dream of getting thin from the comfort of armchair. God help us if we have to get up and do something about it.

So surprise surprise - GMTV's lead story at 7.30am this morning was a spin on the latest piece of research from UCL saying that being fat's all in the genes. They know their market well - just the thing to put a leaden-footed spring in the step of Britain's morbidly obese. Surprise, surprise - plenty of others have jumped on it too.

There seems to be a lot of people not really talking to each other. A joining up of all the hot air is required. Perhaps a celebrity chef, a scientist, a government minister and a cuddly breakfast TV show could for once - put commercial interests aside - and tackle the fact people are fat and getting fatter. Trouble is - people getting fatter is a nice little money earner. Why bother?

Hollyoaks Bird Flogging Tickets For Lloyd-Webber

Very simple, very effective, very good idea.

For the floating Google searcher, welcome to the site. Here's what you're looking for.

Sex Sells. Sex + Vanity = Millionaires

Here's a signpost as to where the digital revolution has taken us to as we move into 2008.

Stressed about the democratisation of hardcore Internet porn? Depressed at the disintegration of the concept of celebrity? Disturbed by the accelerating voyeuristic hunger of tabloid and digital media? Bored by the sapping of creativity and brain-numbingness of reality TV? All four collide in a simple, yet spectacular example of dot-joining to create a piece of business genius.

Bigsister.net (be very careful with this 'not suitable for work' link) is a free, online brothel. It's a real life brothel somewhere in Prague. You can log on for $20 a pop (sorry, monthly fee) and watch the action in its various rooms. Or you can walk in and get some action - for free.

Except it's not for free. As the T&Cs say quite clearly, "Basic requirement is, that every guest visiting BigSister has to sign a contract, where he agrees, that all his activities will be shown via internet, respectively subrogates also his rights, that relate with any kind of publication."

This much I know. The publishers will be rich. The staff won't be rich. The clients will all have middle-aged paunches, many of them German.

What next? Do we get them in every city?

The Hare Has Run Its Course For Frank

News from the UK. The world of greyhound racing was in mourning this week as one of the sport's icons bowed to the inevitable, and called it a day. Frank PR, owners and godfathers of Flying Frank broke the news earlier this week from their London HQ, and The Sun broke the exclusive.

Under the guidance of trainer John Coleman at the Calverbury Kennels in Essex, 'The Flyer' built a solid reputation on the dog track. He could never shake off a troublesome shoulder injury though, and with that, Frank had chased his last hare.

Frank's achievements on the track were miniscule compared with his efforts off it. Flying Frank was a giant amongst greyhounds - his tireless work to secure the long term future of Walthamstow dog track capturing the attention of celebrities and national media.

Flying Frank attracted celebrities of the highest profile (within a 500mile radious of London), such as Brian Lara, Frank Lampard and Ms Dynamite. None of them were available for comment. All of them are gutted.

Flyer - keep on running son. Don't stop til you catch that final hare. 

American Idle

How childish. UK PR Week has a story on how the Florida orange people  conducted an 'X Factor / American Idol' type pitch process. Golin Harris beat off three rivals who all had to pitch in front of one another.

If you're going to run your pitches like that, don't get upset if your PR campaign is as stillborn as the career of Gareth Gates.

How much do those Lindsay pics really cost?

"We all know he's a fucking drama queen. If you've got a problem, why do you want the whole world to know about it?" Fair do's Liam Gallagher. His erudite opinion on Robbie Williams' decision to announce his latest spell in rehab on the eve of the Brits, appears in an excellent article by Stephen Armstrong in this month's Q Magazine.

Rehab is an expanding business. More and more celebrities seem to require a dependency of some sort, simply to maintain that most addictive substance of them all - publicity. And now that almost all forms of plankton have the right to call themselves celebrity, that means the competition for the column inch is getting tougher each day. Sicker stunts, more and more genital flashing - the voyeur has never had it so good. You're going to have to book early to avoid disappointment at the rehab houses.

Celebrities are treading a dangerous path. Thin, waif-like models are the media's punch bag in the US right now, courtesy of my client Dove and a collection of agit media figures. Stick-thin models and unrealistic portayals of women have been blamed for low self-esteem and the rising numbers of eating disorders amongst young girls.

I'm quite happy to continue looking at pics of Lindsay Lohan looking fit without a bra on, (if you need to see them they're here), but I suspect there's a price to pay for all this. After eating disorders, the next badge of honour for young girls will be a spell in rehab or detention for procatively wearing no knickers in class. Oh the cred to be earned from disappearing from school for a week or two, only to announce via your MySpace page that your parents have checked you into rehab. And then to announce a couple of days later that you've checked yourself out. Publicity and respect to die for.

My instincts tell me that we should prepare for backlash against celebrity excess and celebrity manipulation. Sure, paparazzi and tabloids are responding to demand - but the spotlight can quite easily shift from demand to supply. Why don't agents buy knickers for actresses? Why isn't Britney tucked away out of harm's way by the same army of gifted publicists who made her famous? Why does Robbie need to share his woes with the world?

Whilst celebrities and their publicists continue to exploit misery and pain for publicity, the impressionable look on. The longer those queues of nonentity celebrities at the rehab door gets, the more it becomes an aspiration for a kid.