hmmm

020 7269 1430

• Communication
• Legal Business
• Real Estate
• Wealth Management

Sarah Brown. Social Media. And That Dress

September 30, 2009

Hot on the heels of her appearance on stage at the Labour Party conference, Sarah Brown is being lauded as the potential saviour of her husband, a certain Gordon Brown, a man whose prospects of remaining in government following the next general election have long since been written off. But can Mrs Brown save the Prime Minister? Or does her efficacy at PR – her trade, as it happens – not quite cut the mustard?

We pose the question mindful of one or two interesting subtexts, not least the fact that the Sun has officially turned against Mr Brown. That one of its Page 3 girls, Keeley, also publicly supports David Cameron will only add insult to injury, but against this we have Sarah Brown’s brilliant harnessing of social media. She has overtaken Stephen Fry as the country’s leading Twitterer, and, as Alice Thomson opines in today’s Times, is no stranger to the dark arts of media manipulation generally.

Not so long ago, the Sun’s voice was crucial to political success. Is this still the case? Or could the astute utilization of social media – pace, Barack Obama – more than make up for the wandering editorial eye of the paper wot won it?

The answer will be played out over several months, and will help to reveal the extent to which British media has, or has not, irrevocably changed. Meanwhile, we are confronted, thanks to her stint in the conference limelight, with Mrs Brown’s revelations, which include the fact that her man is not a saint, that he is noisy and messy, that he wakes up early, that he has a tough job, and that she loves him. While some onlookers may have been distracted by the exact message intended by her floral dress by Erdem, there was no doubting Mrs Brown’s grasp of what we might term ‘deliberately hesitant oratory’, the kind of public speaking which, with its cultivated pauses and modest glances, puts a premium on self-deprecation. ‘Like me, for I am slightly abashed to be standing here,’ says Mrs Brown, ‘and therefore like my husband. How can you not believe me when I say that his every waking hour is spent thinking about you?’

But does it wash? Or, a bit like that dress, are we left scratching our heads, wondering what, precisely, was meant?

Curiously off topic image courtesy of Aubs.

Chess, politics and madness

September 29, 2009

Blade was struck by this story from the FT, reporting on the uncertain political fate of Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion who retired from chess in 2005 to become the face of opposition to Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.

As a chess player of some ineptitude, Blade has the utmost admiration for Mr Kasparov. Confronted with the agony of 64 black and white squares, the man was a genius, regardless of the colour of his troops. But a cursory glance at chess in literature reveals that the game is inextricably linked to madness. This is a subject to which Blade will return, but at first blush, casting his eyes around his library, Blade encounters Vladimir Nabokov’s The Defence, Elias Canetti’s Auto da Fe, Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass and Stefan Zweig’s The Royal Game. In none of them do chess players shine as emblems of civilian sanity. What other fate for Mr Kasparov was there, Blade wonders, than political discombobulation?

Pictured courtesy of Zee Anna: chess, a combative old game but not, perhaps, the best preparation for politics.

Bill Bateson RIP

September 28, 2009

It is with regret that we pay tribute to Bill Bateson, the former sports editor of the News of the World, who died last week at his home in Truro, Cornwall. He was 73.

Bateson was a legend on Fleet Street and in sports journalism. He worked at the NoW for 34 years, seeing it move from broadsheet to tabloid and surviving no less than 14 editors. A devoted Arsenal fan, Bateson rarely missed games, both at Highbury and latterly the Emirates, until illness made the journey from Cornwall too difficult.  He is survived by his wife, daughter Sally, son Paul and his five grandchildren.

Many years ago, one of Swordplay’s scribes had the great pleasure of sharing lunch with Bateson and, as he called them, some “fellow travellers”.  It was neither an occasion of salacious revelry,  nor one of weary temperance. It was, however, a repast in which wit, bonhomie and zest for life obscured all other emotions. Our scribe went on to discover that such was always the case when Bateson was at the table.

More recently, the increasingly acerbic Times columnist Giles Coren lambasted the old-school luncheon culture in a piece whose peg was the death of Keith Floyd but whose targets included those on Fleet Street who might share the late TV chef’s more sociable tendencies. We know not if Coren knew Bateson, but we find it hard to believe that he could say a word against him. What is certain is that we mourn the passing of one of the last great Fleet Street journalists.

Next Page »