August 2006

'WHO SAYS THE OLD ONES AREN'T THE BEST?'

As my mother once said, never expect to please everyone ..

Robin Hoodwinked?
By John Plunkett / Television 12:55pm

It's the biggest mystery since ITV commissioned a second series of Love Island - what has happened to the master tapes for Robin Hood? And is Hungary's answer to Police Five's Shaw Taylor on the case?

Latest reports from Hungary - where the BBC1 series was being filmed - suggest the thief snuck past security guards and climbed up a fire escape.

PR stunt. I suspect Mark Borkowski is already writing his 'Who says the old ones aren't the best?' article about how it reminds him of the good old days of classic PR tomfoolery etc etc etc etc zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Posted by beneboy on August 29, 2006 03:29 PM.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2006/08/robin_hoodwinked_1.html#more

FAIRY TELLE WEDDING

EXCLUSIVE Have the Big Brother couple found true love or is it a ...
Mirror.co.uk - London,UK
... As celebrity agent Mark Borkowski puts it: "Their celebrity was beginning to wane. By getting married so soon they're trying to re-establish themselves.". ...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17624139&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=fairy-telle-wedding--name_page.html

FAIRY TELLE WEDDING

Have the Big Brother couple found true love or is it a fame-hungry stunt?
By Antonia Hoyle
AT 4pm today Chantelle Houghton will say "I do" to Samuel Preston - after meeting a mere 222 days ago in the Celebrity Big Brother house.
The happy couple will exchange vows in front of 45 guests at an intimate ceremony at upmarket Dartmouth House in London's Mayfair
The nuptials will be a lavish affair - the bride's ivory gown has been designed by Elizabeth Emanuel, who crafted Princess Diana's wedding dress in 1981.
And afterwards there's an exotic beach holiday to look forward to.
But the big question on everyone's lips is: why such a scramble to get down the aisle?
Preston, who fronts indie band the Ordinary Boys insists that marrying Chantelle so soon after meeting "just felt right".
But their friends are concerned over their haste, and point to the differences between them as ruining the chance of it lasting.
"There's no doubt they're devoted to each other - anyone in their company sees them kissing, touching and texting," says a mutual friend.
"I'm not saying they're not in love - no one's cynical about that. The cynicism comes into why they've decided to get married so quickly. Some of us think they're doing it to capitalise on their fame."
It's a fair assumption. Before CBB, Essex-born Chantelle was a sales girl and Paris Hilton impersonator while music biz insiders say Preston's band had a limited future. But being on the show has changed both their fortunes. Chantelle, 23, got a magazine contract, sold her life story to E4's Living The Dream, and modelled for Marks & Spencer and Motorola. She has now officially made a million. Meanwhile, 25-year-old Preston got a Top 10 single from the re-release of Boys Will Be Boys and a DJ slot on national radio.
Yet neither are big enough stars to see their celebrity last much longer. Although as man and wife it'll be a different story.
Which is why advisers to the couple - who have become jokingly known as Prestelle - are said to have encouraged them to wed at the first opportunity.
Aides told them there was a "small window of opportunity" after Big Brother 7 before the value of their vows slipped. As celebrity agent Mark Borkowski puts it: "Their celebrity was beginning to wane. By getting married so soon they're trying to re-establish themselves."
Last night, the couple stayed at the plush Chesterfield Hotel in Mayfair. Beforehand, Chantelle spent 10 hours at stylists Richard Ward.
She left the Chelsea salon with newly dark brown locks, just visible under a cap with white hair extensions attached to it - a feeble attempt to fool photographers into thinking she was still a bottle blonde.
It's not the only thing they have done to try and outwit the press.
They listed three possible wedding venues - Brighton Pavil-lion, Claridges and Dartmouth House. Even guests didn't know where to go until this morning. Was this to maintain the sanctity of their big day? Or to protect their big day? Or to protect their £300,000 magazine deal?
Borkowski adds: "It's a well-known tactic to say you want a low-key wedding-. So if it doesn't get any coverage you can say you didn't want any anyway."
No one doubts there is a spark between them, yet few believe they make a perfect match.
Many of Preston's pals feel he's far better suited to his ex-fiancee, Camille Aznar, 25.
"She's more his kind of girl," says one friend. "They used to talk about poetry and politics whereas Chantelle's interested m make-up and fashion.
"She's more his kind of girl," says one friend. "They used to talk about poetry and politics whereas Chantelle's interested in make-up and fashion.
"Chantelle is basically chavvy and Preston's too cool for school. She wants to be famous while he gets fed up with all the exposure.
"There is a chemistry between them but when the honeymoon's over you have to be friends as well as lovers, and their tastes are miles apart."
That's hardly surprising. Preston went to £9,660-a-year Sompting Abbotts prep school near Brighton, whereas self-styled "blonde bimbo" Chantelle left school at 16. Tellingly, she wanted a "fairy-tale" wedding with a horse drawn carriage. He said he'd rather "kill himself".
Her mum Vivien and cabbie dad Alan are said to be thrilled with the nuptials. But there are hints that his mum Miranda and dad Anthony aren't quite so pleased. In fact, Miranda only met Chantelle yesterday. terday. he Ordinary Boys will be there to celebrate, but none of their Celebrity Big Brother housemates are expected.
"Anyone who goes to that wedding is relate" says Jodie Marsh, who befriended Chantelle in the CBB house and was then dumped by her new pal. "I don't think it's genuine at all.
With brands rushing to get involved (Haribo designed a box of sweets just for their wedding) and Chantelle s autobiography due this autumn, the Prestelle bandwagon rumbles on. But friends say they should enjoy their success - and their marriage - while it lasts.
"Everyone's giving it two to five years," confides one source. "Some say they think they're m love, but it's really lust and will wear off.
But Preston insists: "She's like a soulmate."
And Chantelle says: "I want to be Mrs Preston and have that ring on my finger. What's the point in meeting the love of your life and having a long engagement?" Let's hope time proves them right.
antonia.hoyle@mirror.co.uk
CHANTELLE'S GOOD FORTUN
£25,000 for winning Celebrity Big Brother
£280,000 for the interviews she's done with OK!
£300,000 for the wedding coverage
£50,000 for E4's Living The Dream
£150,000 for modelling for M&S
£50,000 for promoting Motorola mobile phones
£300,000 for her autobiography, out this autumn

MY MENTOR: MARK BORKOWSKI ON PHILIP HEDLEY

My Mentor: Mark Borkowski On Philip Hedley

'He taught me about risk and about trust. They are the two things you need'

Interview by Sophie Morris
The Independent :21 August 2006

http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article1220598.ece

At the age of 19 I was a hick from the sticks working at the Wyvern Theatre in Swindon. I was the assistant press officer and I was having a fantastic time doing lots of stunts and scams and learning how to play with the media. I got a story in The Sun about Sooty being eaten by a giant moth, and a bunch of police to turn up to a banned show.

All these people said: "You have to go to London young man", and I heard that the Theatre Royal Stratford East were looking for a new press officer. It was a vibrant left-wing theatre and I went to see Philip Headley, the artistic director. A slightly camp guy greeted me at the door and grilled me with lots of questions, and that was it.

He plonked me into the press office, obviously to stir things up. The first production we had was Steaming and the theatre got its grant cut. Philip said: "Mark, I'm making everyone in your office redundant except you. It's a risk, but I think you've got the stuff."

I think I aged 10 years in 10 minutes because I realised the responsibility. But I was absolutely intoxicated by this notion that Philip taught me, which was risk. He also taught me trust. They are the two things you need.

We worked very closely together and he gave me lots of opportunities, but he didn't ask too many questions. I was the youngest kid in town and the press agents did things in a certain way - you didn't make phone calls to lobby people, you wrote to them. I decided we wouldn't. We would be in people's faces.

He taught me community spirit and that if you have authority you do not abuse that. He also taught me to deal with failure and never to give up. We became very close friends and we still have lunch when time allows. I wouldn't be doing what I am now without Philip.

Mark Borkowski is a publicist and founder of PR company Borkowski. Philip Headley is a former artistic director of the Theatre Royal Stratford East

At the age of 19 I was a hick from the sticks working at the Wyvern Theatre in Swindon. I was the assistant press officer and I was having a fantastic time doing lots of stunts and scams and learning how to play with the media. I got a story in The Sun about Sooty being eaten by a giant moth, and a bunch of police to turn up to a banned show.

All these people said: "You have to go to London young man", and I heard that the Theatre Royal Stratford East were looking for a new press officer. It was a vibrant left-wing theatre and I went to see Philip Headley, the artistic director. A slightly camp guy greeted me at the door and grilled me with lots of questions, and that was it.

He plonked me into the press office, obviously to stir things up. The first production we had was Steaming and the theatre got its grant cut. Philip said: "Mark, I'm making everyone in your office redundant except you. It's a risk, but I think you've got the stuff."

I think I aged 10 years in 10 minutes because I realised the responsibility. But I was absolutely intoxicated by this notion that Philip taught me, which was risk. He also taught me trust. They are the two things you need.
We worked very closely together and he gave me lots of opportunities, but he didn't ask too many questions. I was the youngest kid in town and the press agents did things in a certain way - you didn't make phone calls to lobby people, you wrote to them. I decided we wouldn't. We would be in people's faces.

He taught me community spirit and that if you have authority you do not abuse that. He also taught me to deal with failure and never to give up. We became very close friends and we still have lunch when time allows. I wouldn't be doing what I am now without Philip.

Mark Borkowski is a publicist and founder of PR company Borkowski. Philip Headley is a former artistic director of the Theatre Royal Stratford East

SHOCK, AWE AND COLUMN INCHES

Getting ink and free publicity is essential for any Edinburgh Fringe show; the much used stand bys like fly-posting and flyering are omnipresent come Festival-time. Every stunter tries to turn a trick to get noticed, but this year shock and outrage has taken a back seat because one comedian has broken the spell. Tonight Mark Watson finishes his 36-hour stand-up show and has achieved instant fame is this best PR stunt of the 2006 Fringe. Mark Borkowski talks "shock awe and column inches" with veteran journalist Stephen Gardner. Click to play MP3

'SHE JUST WANTS ENOUGH TO LOOK AFTER THEIR DAUGHTER...'

'She just wants enough to look after their daughter...'
The Scotsman 17 Aug 2006
FOR tabloid editors, it is a divorce made in heaven. For weeks now, the tabloids have tracked every twist in the separation of Heather Mills and Paul McCartney… Mark Borkowski, one of Britain's top PR exponents, says: "The beauty of Phil Hall is he's very well connected, he's a former editor, he will know what the headline will say before it is written."

FOR tabloid editors, it is a divorce made in heaven. For weeks now, the tabloids have tracked every twist in the separation of Heather Mills and Paul McCartney, with coverage convulsing over whether Paul is a tight-fisted control freak, or his model wife is now finally unmasked as a scheming money-grabber.

This is a battle being fought on the playing fields of PR. While the lawyers will ultimately resolve the finances, the fight to win over public opinion seems to intensify daily.

Paul McCartney is represented by the Outside Organisation, an entertainment company with high-profile clients including David Bowie and The Who. In Heather's corner is Phil Hall, a former editor of the News of the World whose other print credentials include being editor-in-chief of Hello!.

The 50-year-old former tabloid editor now runs his own consultancy, Phil Hall Associates. But even for a seasoned operator such as Hall, representing 38-year-old Mills must be a considerable challenge.

This is, after all, Hall admits, a woman reviled by many: "I had known Paul and Heather for some time, and when the marriage broke up, obviously I rang her and offered my sympathy. Then about six weeks into it she rang me and said, 'Look, I'm being absolutely slaughtered by the newspapers, most of which is for stuff that happened 20 years ago.'"

Mills came under a prolonged newspaper onslaught, as soft-porn pictures of the model - which appeared in a German sex-education book published in 1988 - emerged. Hall says Mills told him: "I was 18 years old, I came down from Newcastle, I was wet behind the ears, fell into the hands of a photographer who was pretty unscrupulous and realised what he could do, I fell for the line that these pictures would never be seen by anyone.
It was a mistake, but why should I now be slaughtered by it?"

Mills, who lost a leg in 1993 after being hit by a police motorcycle, has discovered on previous occasions that media interest in her could range beyond her charity work. In 2003, a Channel 4 documentary depicted her as a schemer who manipulated men and whose account of her past is peppered with reinvention.

Hall says Mills had a one-sentence explanation for her bad press: "I married a Beatle, full stop".

Hall adds: "Every partner of a Beatle has had the same problem. Linda had it when she first married Paul, it was the same with Ringo, it's been the same with all of them. They all had this problem because of these revered icons that are put on a pedestal by everybody and the newspapers are very wary of ever criticising them."

How does Heather Mills cope with routinely being labelled a gold-digger?

"It's very cruel, in conversations I've had with her she's not even looking for huge sums, she says wants just enough to look after her daughter, Beatrice, and get on with life. The newspapers are jumping all over it because they just want headlines."

He denies the GBP 200 million figure was floated by Heather's camp. "No, not under any circumstances. Total and utter imagination of a journalist working out the income from McCartney tours. She hasn't been offered GBP 30m or GBP 40m and turned it down, she hasn't been offered anything. The lawyers are still putting their cases together."

As an experienced tabloid journalist, Hall needs few lectures in how celebrity photo-opportunities can be constructed. However, he denies that pictures of Mills shut out of the couple's London home after the locks were apparently changed were stunted to depict Mills as a neglected waif.

"Photographers have been living there 24/7 for the last eight weeks, they haven't left the doorstep at any stage. To suggest a photographer was tipped off is nonsense. She was due to hand the baby over the following day, it is her marital home and 80 per cent of her belongings are in there. I would swear on the Bible to you there was absolutely no set-up."

Hall bristles at the suggestion that a Daily Mail page lead in which Mills was pictured out cycling with her new private guards might appear staged, perhaps to show her as a woman striking out on her own.

"Everyone wants to read some cynical, twisted motive into it," he says.
"She is a human being who has got to live a life, and everyone seems to have forgotten that.

"She has just had an operation on her limb which has taken some bone away, she has to exercise it every day or there is muscle wastage that makes the limb unusable. Is she supposed to sit in the house day after day?"

Hall says he takes 30 calls a day from journalists over the McCartney story yet rarely has direct communication with his client. "I don't speak to her [Mills] hardly at all. I speak to her sister and some friends of hers. She won't read the papers, she is so distressed, people are shouting abuse at her in the streets. It is all pretty horrific at the minute."

His job, he says, is to be "reactive" and to "correct some of the imbalances and madness". That balance tipped rather helpfully in Mills's direction on the front page of yesterday's Daily Mirror. In a "Macca exclusive", the paper claimed Mills had now been "banned" from McCartney's home at Peasmarsh, East Sussex, and instead the ex-Beatle "demanded" the hand-over of their two-year-old daughter take place at a nearby hotel. Details of the story were sourced to "a friend." Heather was photographed leaving the venue with her daughter in a helicopter, allowing for yet another Beatles-pun headline: "Heli Hello".

How do Hall's peers assess his task? Mark Borkowski, one of Britain's top PR exponents, says: "The beauty of Phil Hall is he's very well connected, he's a former editor, he will know what the headline will say before it is written."

However, he believes McCartney is "sharper and cooler" in the PR stakes.
"The Beatles were bred and honed in publicity right back to their early career. Heather Mills McCartney came out of a moment in time and she has only managed to harvest good publicity, she has not really seen negative publicity and this is a shock.

"I think she felt she was bigger and hubris took over. She felt it was a war between Paul McCartney and her, and she felt she could win it. She didn't recognise or ultimately truly respect what her husband stood for."

Max Clifford believes Hall is facing a struggle by representing McCartney's wife: "Heather McCartney is disliked by almost everybody you speak to, Paul McCartney is liked by almost everybody you speak to. She is the one who has got to do all the work and got to change things.

"Paul McCartney starts from the position of almost being a legend worldwide, one of our all-time favourites. She starts from a position of being perceived by almost everybody out there as a gold-digger."

Clifford says he has "an awful lot of sympathy" for Hall's role in representing Mills, adding: "He is on an absolute hiding to nothing, first of all because of McCartney's popularity and status of 40 odd years, the way the public perceive her, and the fact that, in my view, she is not listening, or wouldn't listen to, anyone."

NO NUDITY? NOW THAT'S A SCANDAL

No nudity? Now that's a scandal
The Sunday Times - UK
... “It’s become a deep cliché,” says Mark Borkowski, the publicist famous for his promotion of extreme acts such as Archaos and the Jim Rose Circus. ...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-2289430,00.html

No nudity? Now that's a scandal
Being offensive has always been a way to get a little attention in Edinburgh, but is it still possible to shock audiences used to reality TV, asks Nick Thorpe

In the event that the Unnecessarily Offensive Theatre company wins some kind of award at this year’s Edinburgh festival, it is unlikely to be for subtlety.
Acts of Depravity, strategically listed on the first page of the fringe comedy programme, is described as follows: “A sex in the city brief encounter between Tennessee Williams, Alan Bennett, Chekhov and an existential vibrator (I vibrate therefore I am) all combine to bring bad taste comedy to an absolutely fabulous new low. Hilariously offensive.”

It’s an enthusiastic if perplexing stab at box-office-boosting obscenity, but it’s likely to encounter some stiff competition in a festival that doesn’t so much court controversy as speed-date it.
Do these fringe first-timers (in this case a splinter group from an amateur Shakespeare society in Leicester) know they’re up against Slaughterhouse Live — whose full-colour ad depicts a bloodied man on a toilet holding a severed pig’s head between his legs? Can they ever hope to challenge hardcore stand-ups Jerry Sadowitz, Mike Wilmot or Doug Stanhope, spitting bile for the title of most offensive comedian on the planet? Could they further crank the publicity machine by posing naked? Or — whisper it — are shock tactics yesterday’s marketing gimmick? With transvestite festival veterans Lady Boys of Bangkok and the genital origami of Puppetry of the Penis already a part of the comedy establishment, could it be that on the 60th anniversary of the fringe, audiences are unshockable? Is anybody really offended by anything any more? “It’s become a deep cliché,” says Mark Borkowski, the publicist famous for his promotion of extreme acts such as Archaos and the Jim Rose Circus. “The festival is littered with people desperate to get some sort of attention, and the lazy route to that is shock value. But the envelope has been pushed back so many times that Edinburgh audiences just say, ‘Oh God, here we go again’.”
Outrage on the fringe is nothing new. Back in the 1960s it was a topless woman in a wheelchair and shows such as Futz, a production about bestiality, that grabbed headlines. In the 1980s a play entitled (misleadingly, as it turned out) Live Sex on Stage pulled in the punters, while a church venue hurriedly closed down a production of Lady Chatterley’s Lover it was hosting. But in those days outraged city councillors such as Moira Knox could be relied upon to condemn the latest freak show/sacrilegious artwork/naked trapeze act — and thereby guarantee a box-office sell-out.
Nowadays they’ve fallen quiet. “New Labour changed everything — everyone became more PR savvy,” laments Borkowski, who engineered a few of his own ticket-boosting run-ins with Knox. “You haven’t got the Tory grandees to wind up any more. Nowadays who really gets annoyed by sexually explicit scenes on stage, when we’ve got people copulating live on reality TV?” Only the more conservative religious groups can still be relied upon to be offended — one reason, perhaps, for the rise in shows such as Jesus: The Guantanamo Years or We Don’t Know Shi’ite.
Elsewhere the self-proclaimed nasties of stand-up have to dig ever deeper to provoke a walk-out.
Glaswegian Jerry Sadowitz — who was knocked unconscious after opening a Canadian set with the words: “Hello moosef***ers” — is challenged this year by the American Doug Stanhope, who made front-page news at the recent Kilkenny comedy festival under the quote: “Irish women are too ugly to rape.”
“No press is bad press,” quips an unrepentant Stanhope in his blog. “Unless you’re the guy with the sportcoat over your head being lead from the courthouse.” Whether you think this is funny, appalling or just adolescent, it’s almost impossible to find a comedy critic who isn’t praising Stanhope’s “aggressive intelligence” (The Guardian) or hailing him as the next Bill Hicks. Certainly, nobody on the festival circuit will easily admit to being offended — which must be hard for performers who claim to thrive on disapproval. Are there really any sacred cows left to massacre? The Fringe director, Paul Gudgin, thinks not. He receives remarkably few public complaints — mainly because content on the 1,800 shows he oversees is clearly advertised in advance.
That doesn’t stop everybody, however. “There was one show called Japanese Shock Show or something like that, and someone complained that he had taken his 12-year-old daughter to it and she’d been shocked,” recalls Gudgin. “I had to stop myself from saying: “Well, the clue was in the title . . . ”
In other cases warnings on content boosted ticket sales in unexpected ways. “Not so long ago we noticed on our computer that one customer had done a search for every show with the word nude or erotic in it,” says Gudgin. “As far as we could tell he had been to see all of them. It seemed an odd selection, obviously someone from the dirty mac brigade — but I bet he wasn’t shocked . . . ”
Edinburgh’s higher-brow audiences appear no less susceptible to the heady whiff of controversy. Website and brochure warnings designed to protect under-16s from the “explicit content” of this summer’s Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition are only likely to increase adult visitor numbers at the National Galleries of Scotland — where the photographer’s famous self-portrait involving a bullwhip was among the nudes that went on public show yesterday.
Meanwhile Edinburgh International Festival could trump even Mapplethorpe with its stage adaptation of Michel Houellebecq’s Platform — “one of the most successful and controversial novels of the past decade” — directed by the controversial Calixto Bieito.
Having somehow included oral sex in his 2003 Hamlet and hired real prostitutes for his take on Mozart’s opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, the Spanish director is likely to need less poetic licence for Houellebecq’s characters, who trawl the S&M clubs of Paris before setting up a business in Third World sex tourism.
“We don’t set out to cause offence,” says Jackie Westbrook, marketing and communication manager for the Edinburgh International Festival. “On the other hand we want to present work that has contemporary resonance and power, and that may well create controversy.”
Last year’s The Death of Klinghoffer, John Adams’s opera about terrorism aboard a cruise liner, was a case in point. Westbrook experienced her own unexpected “emotional impact” from watching hostages living in fear. “Are modern audiences harder to shock?” she asks. “No — the power of live theatre is intrinsic, and each generation discovers it afresh.”
As Anthony Neilson, that show’s director, pointed out, being disturbed by a work of art is not necessarily a negative thing: “If something shocks me, I don’t just walk away from it,” he said. “I ask myself why I am shocked by it.”
Gudgin believes controversy will reign as long as shock comedians continue to fill theatres — but advises newcomers to make sure their material is up to the hype.
“If someone has got something important to say, then shock remains a valuable device,” he says. “Shock value can sell a show for a few days, but if it isn’t any good it’ll die out pretty quickly — however controversial it is