Welcome to the weekly Wrap from How-Do - media news for the North West.

 The Wrap's guest editor this week is  Mike Unger.

  It was only last month that Man City was borrowing £2m from its former owner to pay the wages, but then on Tuesday we woke up to find that some seriously rich oil people had moved in and it was now probably the richest club in the world. News that touched a few buttons.

Noel Gallagher said that he’s in heaven because every time a Man U supporter fills up with petrol he puts more money into City’s transfer kitty. And Ric Turner – an avid supporter -  thinks he’s in a twisted dream and fears waking up to discover it’s still 2006 and Stuart Pearce is tracking down players of the calibre of Billy Sharp and Izale McLeod.

I always thought that exclusives were – well – exclusives. Not boring, simpering chats with yesterday’s girl band singers desperate to tell naive telepeople they know nothing. And then for Granada to brag that they had bagged Posh Spice’s “only Manchester television interview” is nothing short of pathetic. Where else is Vicky’s PR machine meant to go (seeing that the Beeb NW don’t do this type of work) – Channel M? Presumably the “much heralded behind the scenes negotiations” were to persuade  Granada to broadcast it all. There was a lovely comment at the end of the story saying that this was akin to the Knutsford Guardian interviewing the Scout hut leader.

The How-Do Polls are great and whoever writes the questions deserves a pint of Cains. In the poll on How Excited Are You About Liverpool 08, the winner was “Praying for success and not a balls up.” While I voted for this, tragically the year is actually neither an unqualified success nor a balls-up. There have been lots of strange decisions and too many one-offs that could have been in town for the year.

The problem with the hunt for the £500 logo for the new county of Cheshire West and Chester is not that the four on the short-list are boringly predictable, it is that the name is politically correct nonsense – short, punchy and evocative it is not. And I live in the patch.

Finally and for the record, the Wolverhampton Express & Star has the biggest circulation in the regions, while the MEN has the biggest combined circulation and distribution The problem with  large regional papers like these and the Liverpool Echo is how they reflect the communities they serve – which is what all good papers should do.

Former newspaper editor Mike Unger is shortly stepping down as chief executive of  The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation and is chairman of Placenorthwest.co.uk

Elsewhere on How-Do this week: 

• Top 100 NW Brands 2008 - now open for nominations
  
• Stoke Mayor attacks his own comms chief
• Neil Gibson joins Vimto as head of marketing
• William Watt moves to Blackpool Gazette as digital content producer
• Sheffield agency Uber scoops Booths supermarkets account
  
• Blakeway North shoots HD documentary for Sky
• Fiona Kennaghan promoted at ITV Productions
• Ofcom agrees The Revolution changes
• Massive hits BBC Three this autumn
• Olympic success for realbuzz.com
  
• Creatives urged to think big by Titan Outdoor
• Major Triumph for Isle of Man
• Halle and Liverpool Phil sign deals with BBC Radio 3
• Cheshire Police launches hunt for arresting advertising
• Connectpoint wins Eurocamp PR brief
• Hennessey to Gyro from Phones4u
• Granada's Hall takes to world stage
• CBJWT wins three year £9m Wesleyan Assurance Society brief
• Tetley subsidiary Good Earth Teas appoints Communique
• Lake Creative secures three new clients
• Lewis Manchester wins UK brief from IDS Scheer
  
• Bored How-Do reader sets us a challenge
• infoUK poaches Steve Heath from Experian
• NWDA awards Euro RSCG its £1.2m recruitment business
• londonparties.co.uk appoints w00t!media as sales agency
• Knowsley to raise local govt standards with major online drive
• LOVE loses £2m Yorkshire Tea account
• 'Forest products' company Weyerhaeuser appoints Triangle PR
• Mcr Univ tasks An Ideal World to promote investment banking day
• TBWA and Imperial Leather get into a lather
• It's Michael Welch time again
• Reader's Digest appoints Media-Link
• UKFast poaches new head of sales from larger competitor Rackspace
• MUFC teams up with mxData for TravelFC launch
• John Thomson set for Corrie
• New BBC One drama The Choir Project filming in Manchester
• Bauer Radio appoints Worrall head of regional PR
• Kurdish Film Festival content announced
• Of Time and the City does film festival circuit
• Steve Penk buys Oldham radio station The Revolution
  
• BBC commissioning overhauled
• O'Brien stands down as head of BBC in the North West
  

How-Do!

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Comments (3)

3  By George Dearsley , on 19-09-2008 07:35 I have to disagree with Hmmm. I worked on the MEN's diary one day a week during this period and although Peter Willis was raw and a bit of a maverick he brought in good, newsworthy and interesting stories which were properly evaluated by Guy Meyler who ran the page brilliantly. Indeed the diary was the best read part of the paper as various reader surveys confirmed. This was the era of "Madchester" and with Granada and Coronation Street on the patch is it any wonder that the diary carried celebrity stories? However, it also featured a very wide spectrum of individuals from politicians to football stars to entertainers to businessmen. The diary was put together by three people. Among the contributors was Andy Spinoza, now boss of high flying PR company SKV. Nowadays, through cutbacks, it is written by just one person, an impossible task. By the way, Meyler was a legend and a personal friend of many stars, including Barry Humphries. My favourite Meyler story was when he arrived late to interview Gandhi on a visit to the North West. Running alongside the train as it pulled away Meyler shouted to the great man, as he leaned out of the window, "have you got a message for the people of Manchester?" To which Gandhi replied "No!" It's true that the circulation of the MEN fell like a stone but the diary was not the cause. Report