The Scene: a secret room in a secret Brighton hotel. Present are Gordon Brown, his wife Sarah, a Top Lawyer From A Leading City Firm and sundry apparatchiks. As they dip their cookies in their coffees, they look nervous, apprehensive, perhaps even fearful.
Sarah Brown: My hero, my husband, this is not good enough.
Prime Minister: I believe in this country. I go to bed thinking of my countrymen every night. As such, I want to talk about policy, from a terrible hour onwards.
Sarah: Yes, my hero, but we’ve been working so hard on your human side. Sometimes you have to accept that pesky TV interviewers will want to talk about it, too.
Prime Minister: I can accept that. But there is personality in policy, surely?
Sarah: No, my hero, this is where you are wrong. And losing your cool when asked whether you have a human side is not good, from the PR point of view.
Prime Minister: I cannot accept that. It seems to me to be an intellectually flawed supposition. Surely my loss of cool illustrates precisely the human side you so adore?
Sarah (swooning): My hero, how I could I not adore your dark and brooding temper, especially when it erupts like an undersea volcano? And yes, you are right to allude to this curious paradox. You erupt, therefore you exist, it is true, while in contrast, when you are dormant, no one knows if you are human. But, my hero, you must refrain from erupting on television.
Apparatchik with grey beard: Excellency, your wife is right. It is never a good idea to lose one’s cool publicly.
Apparatchik with blue beard: Excellency, I agree. Only the most inept of PR advisors would contend that storming out of a live interview has a silver lining.
Sarah: My hero, don’t take this the wrong way. You may be noisy and messy but I love you. The problem is, how do we convince the country to do likewise come the election?
There is a deathly silence as all clasp their chins in their hands and stare forlornly at the wall. Suddenly, the Top Lawyer From A Leading City Firm coughs.
Top Lawyer: There may be a way in which we can launch a counter-attack, legally speaking.
Prime Minister (swarthily, firmly): Go on.
Top Lawyer: Well, it seems to me that you have a claim for false imprisonment against Sky News.
Prime Minister (darkly): Go on.
Top Lawyer: Can it be a coincidence that within hours of the Murdoch-owned Sun announcing that it would not be supporting the government, i.e., your good self, the Murdoch-owned Sky News chains you to an interviewer’s chair?
Prime Minister (with a menacing smile): My thoughts exactly. You are almost as clever as me. Go on.
Top Lawyer: It seems to me that when you attempted to storm out of the interview you were prevented from doing so by microphone wires which tethered you to your chair. This is a clear case of false imprisonment and an infringement of your human right to storm out of interviews if you wish.
Sarah: My hero, my husband! How dare they do this to you!
Top Lawyer: They did it because they can. But so can we. With your permission, Excellency, I will issue a writ.
Prime Minister: How much money will I win?
Sarah: My hero, it’s not about the money! It’s about the people of this country, the ones you think about all the time, especially at night when you’re moodily muttering into your toothpaste.
Apparatchik with bon mot: Excellency, it’s about fighting for what’s right.
Prime Minister: Then go forth and issue the writ. Sue Sky News! Sue The Sun! But most of all, sue the government!
There is silence as all absorb this edict. Eventually, Sarah Brown speaks.
Sarah: My hero, is the strain getting to you?
There is no answer, for the Prime Minister has angrily stormed into a door.
Pictured courtesy of Randy Son of Robert: ‘behind every great woman is a hero’ – the Prime Minister and his wife go for a walk.
For a certain poet, an unspoiled stretch of seaside was like “the holy hush there is in the land on Christmas morning. The roads fairly empty, the sky almost free of aeroplanes and you begin to hear and see and smell once more”.
But who uttered these lines?
(It’s a Monday, and this is your starter for 10 – and yes, we’re fresh to the metropolis, from a coastal sojourn.)
The following words appeared in a Times article in 2003, about the paper’s recently departed Head of Legal, Alastair Brett. They’ve been doing the rounds in the wake of Brett’s sudden exit last week, though without attribution. Who, we wonder, wrote them? Two suspects present themselves – our own occasional scribe, Alex Wade, and Dominic Carman, son of the late, great George (an old mucker of Brett’s). Or was someone else the author? Whatever: the fact remains that Brett was a fearless, tenacious and excellent newspaper lawyer, a man whose commitment to press freedom coursed through every vein in his body. We don’t know the precise reasons for his departure, but he will be missed.
“[He] is known for his impassioned commitment to press freedom – so impassioned that he has been described as “certifiably insane”. Capable of an intimidatory snarl or two, and prepared to be stubborn, Brett is far from mad. He is erudite, charming (so the ladies say), and not known for sitting on the fence. If his sanity has, tongue firmly in cheek, been questioned, one thing not open to doubt is that Brett epitomises the old school Fleet Street lawyer”.
Pictured: Fleet Street - not the same as it used to be.
A curious observation leaps at us from Roy Greenslade’s piece about whether Conrad Black, shortly to roam the high-class hotels of the world again as a free man, will return to the UK and carry out his threat to sue his biographer, Tom Bower, for libel:
I somehow doubt that he would have the appetite, or the funds, to pursue a libel action, but Black marches to the sound of his own drummer, so he might just do that. Even if he did, my money would still be on Bower winning.
Hang on, Roy – what about suing via a no win, no fee deal? Funds or no funds, a CFA would see Conrad through – though maybe he’ll remember what happened to the last press baron who sued Bower. Anyone for Richard Desmond’s curious dalliance with libel?
Pictured: the kind of place in which Conrad Black may be spotted (if not at the Royal Courts of Justice).
Surfing and the favelas: how they’re connected
All OK for Desmond and Five
Heading for an airport tonight? Your experience may be different in future…
Released almost a year ago, Spada’s groundbreaking research report, British Professions Today, is available for free download
In this article, Gavin Ingham Brooke and Rohit Grover of Spada examine the importance of marketing and PR in a downturn.
In the latest of our series of white papers, Spada Research examines trends in environmental reporting.
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Πλάτων, Greek philosopher.