I have fond memories of the MPA Christmas Bash. Particularly annual highlights such as the “Mystery Santa” announcement – with the only mystery being: “Just why was it Slade’s Noddy Holder every bloody year?”

It’s Chic-who Time?

Noddy in typical mid-MPA bash pose

But, fair play, you knew where you were with the dulcet Black Country tones of Noddy. Or, more accurately, you at least knew who he was – as you did with the likes of the Drifters and the majority of the other acts who did a festive turn. Even, when the Counterfeit Stones took the stage one year, you at least knew who they weren’t.

But I wonder how many of the MPA old guard at last Friday’s Xmas bash craned their necks stagewards and asked their fellows: “I say, who’s that up on stage with young Steve from J C Decaux?”

Christmas is, of course, a time when you seldom get what you want – partly because most of us don’t really know what we’re after, but trust that someone close to us does and will deliver, just once, that “just-what-I-always-wanted” Christmas morn moment. Sadly, it seldom happens.

Quite frankly, this time last year, there was no mass movement picketing Piccadilly Plaza’s City Tower and chanting “What do we want? A largely controlled circulation weekly business title, like the one they have in Cleveland, Ohio. When do we want it? About this time next year, if that’s okay with you chief?” But, here it is, nevertheless.

So will the good business burghers of Greater Mank get their “just what I always wanted” moment a full eight days early this year or will it be the b2b equivalent of socks (or even “pants”) when Crains pops through their postbox today?

There’s hardly a lot of new blood coursing through its editorial veins – editor Steve Brauner has been doing the NW press rounds almost as long as (lengthy US sojourn excepted) publisher Arthur Porter. Or maybe it just seems that way. Similarly, in terms of circulation or content Crains doesn’t seem to be in a pioneering mode. In truth, I doubt Crains will do much damage to either the MEN or Insider, though others further down the food chain may find it something of a squeeze…

Still, with the first issue of Crains now out, only one question remains briefly unanswered – which page will feature the inevitable self-serving survey highlighting the need for NW businesses to have greater access to inter-business communication channels?

Thickaswood

Doing the Gibbons

Can I just clarify this – Rachael Tinniswood is implying in this week’s Weekly Wrap that the head of a Liverpool-based PR firm issued forth a huge whoop of delight when he realized that the 58-year-old mother of a former colleague was facing a flogging in a Sudanese jail and he stood a good chance of getting some PR bunce out of it?

“Everyone dreams of that once-in-a-lifetime moment when our luck comes in. When that elusive contract or story that we’ve all been after is wrapped up in festive paper and a bright red bow and delivered by carol singers direct to our door.” Tinniswood blithely chirrups away in her apparently irony-free piece.

The only thing I can say is – colleagues, relatives and acquaintances of Tinniswood, don’t let her anywhere near your unattended luggage before you board an international flight. Who knows what she might be tempted to insinuate into it in a bid to secure that “elusive contract or story” ? You have been warned.

Bald Facts

Inappropriate behaviour by PR people was something of a motif on How-Do this week. I wonder how many of the non-celeb clients of the weavemasters general at Farjo Medical Centre were less than delighted when Hale’s Peppermint PR outed “Duncan Bannatyne, Kyran Bracken and ex-Eastender Shaun ‘Barry Evans’ Williamson” as hair transplantees as part of a new account win story this week?

Crossing-dressing regulars of the Transformation chain would surely soil their lacy smalls should Peppermint ever get a sniff of the business, as it were. (The same release also revealed that Farjo’s founder has also been elected as the “first ever European President of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery”. Presumably a role he’ll have for life as there’s no “hair apparent”. Geddit? Ah, please yourselves – it’s coming to a cracker near you soon regardless!)

Wreckutation Management

One definition of “vertigo” I read this week was a “belief that the world was revolving around you”, whilst a “communiqué” was said to mean “a message hastily sent, often from a battlefront.”

For some reason, both definitions struck me as extraordinarily apt as I read of the thinly-disguised sparring between Nathalie Bagnall’s Vertigo and her former employer, Communiqué. I do wonder how either party expects to be trusted with the “management of reputation” by any of their clients when they both seem so intent on making a complete cock of their own as well as each others.

Bhatti Decisions

Bhatti

It reads like the business plan of every London-based media owner who has ever stooped to run a regional sales office in the North West over the last 20 years.

This year, alone, we have seen the likes The Economist (what ever happened to Manchester’s least pro-active media sales person, Robin Riddle by the way?) and the North West-founded GMG scale down their presence in the town. Now we have Associated (fierce (if self-serving) critics of the Express group's decision to shut its NW office in 2000) doing the same with the forced redundancy of Sal Bhatti as head of Metro sales in Manchester.

No doubt Sal will be missed, but what I really miss is the uproar that used to be the traditional response in the North West when any media owner dared to Tippex it’s Mank sales point out of its media pack.

Questions were asked in the House (at least the house shared by Neil McGeehan and Sue Little) when the Reader’s Digest sacked its longstanding Northern sales guy back in the early nineties. By comparison, the entire Northern community seems to be in a decidedly “toss-free” zone about the ever diminishing number of media sales reps that need propping up in many of the city’s less particular watering holes.

At first glance, this has a certain irony when the amount of media being bought from Manchester has never been higher.

However the concentration of NW buying points and the ubiquity of their subsidiary nature and “clash-client handling” status to Soho-based parent companies, probably explains why media sales guys seldom feel any need to venture North.

You can still vote for him girls!

Perharps a chance for the boys at Brilliant to take the moral high ground here for a change…

Finally, there’s only a week to go to the announcement of  the first Top Totty and How-Do Hunk of the year. It’s not to late to register your votes at the usual address.

Tony Murray has been busy recruiting TEFL teachers for the Spring Term in Beijing. We have one applicant with a splendid CV and an extremely plausible manner, but we’re having some trouble taking up references on him. Could anyone with any knowledge of “Welsh” Michael please contact him at tonymurray37@hotmail.com ?

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