The office glossies will undoubtedly be thinner after the current series of Big Brother ends tonight, much to my happiness. I'm sick of these losers adorning the pages where I want to see Britney's children smoking her fags, and Madonna's Mr Olympia standard physique screaming 'PRE-OP' at me from the Spotted section of the magazine.

I don't even know what else to say other than, thank flip that these talentless sacks of pointlessness will be gone soon. The downside is, we have friends over tonight who want to watch the final.

If I can go the night without jumping in front of a spiky-fronted HGV, I'll be surprised.


It's been fun, but, well... actually it hasn't.

Good PR

To coincide with the launch of next gen video game Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, the Last Stop garage in Finsbury, North London is allowing customers to fill up with up to £40 woth of fuel, for free!

The stunt has caused large build-ups of traffic which has brought British moaning to the fore(court ), but to be honest, I'd queue for quarter of an hour (which is allegedly how long it's taking to get to the pumps) for up to £40 worth of petrol. I'm not alone either, as hundreds of motorists took advantage this morning of the promotion, which will end when £20,000 worth of fuel has diminished.

When you consider how much it costs to advertise in the nationals, for something the majority of people will glaze over (£15k for a decent half page in a national tabloid, ratecard price) you can see why PR is chosen over ads, as this for just a fraction more will undoubtedly get blanket coverage in both print and visual coverage. To any potential clients by the way, retained PR prices are nowhere near this scary - the developers had a huge budget, and used that budget. You can get the same coverage for much, much less, if the story's good enough!

As all PRs know, a stunt or campaign idea has to by-line, no matter how loosely, and a spokesperson at Electronic Arts (EA) was really clutching at straws to explain away this brilliant stunt: "Petrol prices are very relevant at the moment so we are hoping to start everyone's weekend in a positive way."

She added that the firm decided on the petrol giveaway because fuel is used as a currency in Venezuela where the game Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is set. Brilliant.

Bad PR

Next Wednesday, in Geneva, a £4 billion experiment will come to fruition, as "the most ambitious and expensive civilian science experiment in history, based on the biggest machine that humanity has yet built" is switched on, in a bid to learn more about the Universe.

Sounds great, right?

Uhhh... well, I think it does, but it's getting loads of coverage today due to alarmist theories that think the machine will create a black hole that will destroy the world, and the neighbouring celestial bodies from the inside out!

I'm really intrigued by it - and think that the press should be focussing on the good it could do rather than give scaredy cat creationists the forum to frighten the public, which they haven't, thus the fact it made today's Bad PR slot.

This machine, 17 miles (27km) in circumference, is the world’s most powerful atom-smasher (which sounds really unscientific!) the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), created at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva. 10,000 scientists and engineers from 85 countries have been involved for almost two decades. In the near future, it will recreate the high-energy conditions that existed one trillionth of a second after the big bang. In doing so, it seeks to answer many of the outstanding questions about our Universe, which I'm too simple to question anyway!


Home in five day's time.

Lily Allen has been in the media recently for all the wrong reasons, despite not having released a song for ages.

The 23 year old professional binger had a alcohol fuelled spat with legendary miseryguts Sir Elton John, who she publicly told to 'f*** off' whilst presenting the GQ Men's Awards. On this same night, she also stated that she would still 'f***' 82 year old Tony Bennett, who was there to pick up the lifetime achievement award for being old, or something. Oh, and she also spilled the beans about her better-behaved stage actor Alfie Allen, who has just gotten engaged to his actress girlfriend Jamie Winstone, and hadn't even told close friends yet.

As if her PR team didn't have enough to deal with, she came out today with a gripe about how much she was paid for hosting the event, whingeing that the organisers "just said: 'Do you want a gift?'" and gave her a £7,500 Hermes blanket to show up.

If she wasn't happy with the payment, she shouldn't have done it. Silly girl! It's not like she wouldn't have been aware of the payment before presenting, and could have pulled out any time.

I wonder what they'll have her do to make her look less like a childish numpty!

Our very own Head Yeti, Andy Barr is sticking it to the man today, by standing up to the tyrannical Gloucester City Council, who commissioned road works on the A40 joining Gloucester to the Forest of Dean, which have caused traffic chaos.

He has written to the Forest Council and asked that an ASBO be slapped on two of the Gloucester City Councillors who signed for the work to go ahead, as in his words, 'the buck stops there' - very true!

He is keen to point out that he's not the village weirdo, but rather somebody who wants to point out that although the roadworks cannot now be stopped, despite causing an hour long tailback at best before and after work, the workmen should be doing more than what they currently are: e.g., nothing but sleeping and reading papers!

So far, he's been interviewed by the local radio station Severn Sound, the Forest paper, and more. He is but one man, but he will fight the tyranny of evil men/lazy construction. This point will not only highlight the lack of application by the hapless workers, but also the problems that working on a rural route causes if not for the right reasons (the council may have exaggerated their reasons for working on the road by photoshopping images of road disrepair just to bring forward plans to build a bus lane for a service nobody uses anyway even at peak times, but we're never ones to whisper... )!

Here's a picture I mocked up of our tale's hero:


Brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?

Good PR

Google's PR team have clearly had a big hand in the launch of their new browser, Google Chrome.

Basically, they 'accidentally leaked' a 40 page comic strip, which documents the browser in a fun media-friendly way. Apparently, bloggers got their hands on the story earlier than intended - yeah, right. Google know that the best way to get out there tech-wise is through bloggers, who are not only influential but also clued in to the latest web happenings. It was only a matter of time before the wider media got a hold of the story, which has resulted in some great PR for Google!

Their newest browser does loads of new things that I have no idea about, but Jilly says that the browser will change the way people interact, being more like an application that can be used to browse the web rather than just a web window, combining the best bits of both Firefox and IE, and starting from scratch on the new browser.

Here's a link to the comic, which is definitely fun, and definitely comprehensive!
Open comic link

Bad PR

I hate it when this sort of story makes it into the national press... as if we didn't shift blame enough already...

Apparently, 'experts' have found a 'divorce gene', which upon study was more likely to be found active in people who suffer marital problems more than others. Basically, men with a variant of the gene vasopressin, which is 'central to human bonding', scored badly on a questionnaire designed to assess how well they bond with their partner and were more likely to report having suffered marital difficulties.

This apparent 'discovery' raises the possibility that scientists could one day develop drugs to target the gene in an attempt to prevent marriages from falling apart. What rubbish.

"Oh dear, I'm sorry I'm late for our meal, I'm afraid I've just left an orgy, and the girls wouldn't let me go. I think it's this blasted vasopressin 'divorce gene'. I hope you can forgive me."

"Of course, we all know that you're not really looking for an excuse for your failings, nor looking for a reason to sleep around and treat me badly. Why wouldn't I believe that a chemical is responsible? I mean, despite the fact that no exercise and 30 pie and chips a day could be responsible for my unsightly weight, I'm grateful for the lovely researchers who tell me that I can put it down to my genes instead. Gosh, I sure wish I didn't have this gene. [mmm, loving this ice-cream!!!]"

"Yes. God bless excuses, uh, I mean... this fantastic research. Oh honey, just to let you know, I'm going to Amsterdam tomorrow also, the red lights are a calling."


Could Mosley have the 'divorce' gene?

We have just had a great weekend in terms of coverage (again!), but this time, we have managed to get a piece in the most influential national in our professional opinions; the Metro, both sides of the weekend!


Here's Friday's cutting for the Shoreditch Grand Prix...


...and yesterday's cutting!

Very happy as you can imagine - another Yeti first for the same campaign, ladies and gentleman!

Good PR

Apple have announced an application called Direct Line, which when installed on iPhones helps you automatically navigate phone trees to get right to an operator, which companies use as a system to call manage, according to Font of all Knowledge Andy.

I'm often annoyed by the fact that I've got to wait on the line listening to a slow-talking numpty when I could be speaking to an operator instead - they say that it's making our call more personal as we can choose the area we'd like to call through to, which is fine, but when your option is number 9, it gets a little more than annoying .

Bad PR

Bad news for flies today, after the University of California have publicly announced the best way to kill them. Well, I sort of read between the lines, but you'll see how I did.

Basically, the Uni have been studying flies and their amazing reaction rates for a while now, using extremely high tech slow-motion cameras, which have detected that flies act on impulse less than 200 milliseconds after sensing danger. The report shows the muscle groups that flies use when approached from various angles with lethal fly swats/chopsticks a la Miagi, and as such, can guage where they're going to fly to get out of the way of danger. This gives us the heads up when looking to kill the irritatingly pointless, pathetically evolved things, apparently, who have a near 360 degree view.

So, if you want to kill a fly, take it from behind and swat directly in front of the fly, by which time it will have reached said point, and will fall, lifeless from the freedom of the air. If you wish, you may place one foot on the gasping carcass, and stand victorious over the creature, who thought it was better than you.

Or just use fly spray, it's much more fun, and much more certain.


Jeff Goldblum's said to be prettyyyy worried.