Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Iraq visit helps PM avoid London queues

London's Oxford Street was Britain's busiest at the weekend, choked with millions of consumers going toe-to-toe for Xmas presents.

But while shoppers bustled, barged, searched, queued and collapsed in exhaustion, one canny Brit dodged the crowds and snapped up a few bargains at the same time. That man was Prime Minister Tony Blair, who nipped off to Iraq for a spot of Xmas bargain hunting. Speaking from the country's capital, the prime minister gushed: “There are bargains galore in Baghdad, and the shops are practically deserted.”

Blair was visiting Iraq’s war torn capital after a night of fire fights that saw the heavily damaged city’s residents flee in fear. The prime minister managed to snap up some local fare in the near-deserted streets, grabbing a yashmak and a hooka among other gifts for his family.

A squaddie contact of the PCP whispered: “He asked us where he could get a cheap burkha for Cherie.”

Following his shopping trip, the Prime Minister quickly stopped off at a few British army bases in Iraq, to speak with sqauddies and autograph tanks.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Lack of scandal dents England blame clean sheet

“Lack of scandal” is to blame for England’s cricket team failing to escape criticism from one of their worst test cricket performances in years, claims coach Duncan Fletcher. The England cricket XI, trailing the series 3-0, lost the coveted Ashes to world champs, Australia, today in Perth.

Ball-tampering, match-rigging and referee bribery scandals have captured the public imagination and diverted media attention from shockingly poor England performances in recent years. However, the Ashes series, the cricket world’s most-anticipated series, was painfully scandal-free for the team.

Coach Fletcher lamented: “It’s the worst (Test series) for years in terms of scandal. What I’d give for a bit of dodgy ball tampering, like we had in the summer when we lost against Pakistan. We can usually rely on (world’s best ‘spin’ bowler) Shane Warne for a bit of private life strife to divert the media’s gaze. But they gave us nothing.”

Fletcher was speaking to the PCP from the bottom of a pint glass in Whitechapel, London.

Opik to leave Irmia for “more exotic name”

Liberal Democrat MP, Lembit Opik, is to leave latest squeeze, Gabriela Irimia, for a girl with “an even more exotic name,” according to an insider.

Having hooked up with the z-list Transylvanian from failed novelty pop act, the Cheeky Girls, just two weeks after splitting with fiancé, weather girl Sian Lloyd, it is said that Opik is craving an even more exotic name to appear in gossip columns with.

“Lembit thinks that Irimia sounds too ‘Mongolian hoards’,” says a friend. “He’s more into a spacey kind of vibe now – something like ‘Ursula X150’ would be a perfect name to date.”

Opik split from weather girl fiancé, Sian Lloyd, two weeks ago, as she refused to change her name to Streets of Sian Fran Cisco. Lloyd said at the time: “Lembit insists on having a partner whose name sounds like a 70s TV show starring a young Michael Douglas and improbably-nosed Karl Malden. But I didn’t want to change my name.”



Monday, December 11, 2006

Wii like - Nintendo gives prisoners new chat-up line

Word from inside the joint reaches PCP towers that prisoners are going gaga for Wii (pron. 'we'). That's the new Nintendo Wii, yo.

See, the new game console's unique playing style - using the controller like a kind of raquet or lightsabre handle - is leading to frenetic game play. This leads to sweaty palms and which in turn leads to controllers slipping right outta hands and onto the floor.

Like soap.

You wanna pick it up?

Go on. Pick it up bitch.

Dalek babe's Polonium boon

An immigrant in a dead-end job today snatched a chance of a better life - thanks to deadly poison, Polonium 210, yo.

Raven-haired man magnet, Ela Malek, was up to her East European elbows in dead fish and dirty dishes at Itsu, the restaurant at the centre of the London radiation scare.
As a poorly paid waitress, the snake-hipped seductress harnessed media interest in the Polonium scare to get sexy pictures in national tabloids like the Sun.

'Radiating' sex appeal, the so-called toxic stunna served up a well-honed pitch designed to appeal to the British tabloid market. The busty brunette with Bond-girl looks said: "I feel like I'm caught in the middle of some mad spy movie."

Malek, the only daughter of Davros the Dalek, also discovered a rash on her perfect ten body around the time of the scare. She didn't say where the rash was or whether the STD clinic medicince has cleared it up, but has sworn to get rid of it before any casting couch calls.

Xmas party polls top Xmas polls poll shocker

It’s not shocking! But it's official! Xmas party polls top our Public Relations Professionals’ (PROs) Favourite Xmas polls poll list, 2006.

Britain’s battalions of brand publicists are unleashing Xmas party polls at a rate of more than 5 per day – that’s a whopping 35 per week, according to a simple arithmetic equation designed to patronise readers.

The festive party stories, meant to generate publicity in the nation's newspapers, radio airwaves and televisual broadcast beams, are thrashing lesser counterparts such as research-based stories about crap towns.

Here at your friendly neighbourhood Pop Culture Phrasebook, we've scaled the greasy PR pole to get a bird's eye view of the battle for Yule-time column inches. And we're proud to bring you some highlights from the blizzard of festive party stories that are bound to get you in the party mood. Fortunately, the findings are reasuringly trite and predicatable, so they won't tax your emotional or mental energy reserves:

  • Bosses can be mean about giving workers money and time for Xmas partying, says GMI Europe
  • People spend money at Xmas parties, according to Cornhill Direct
  • Norwich Union reckons that hangovers from Xmas parties make you feel ill
  • Cleaners attend less Xmas parties than some other workers, such as Xmas party organisers, says British Cleaning Council
  • People have Xmas party antics such as flirting with colleagues, finds found Nandos
  • Drunks lose phones when hammered, says T-Mobile
Digging deeper into the fascinating pop cultural phenomenon of the Xmas party PR poll story, the PCP made yet another jaw-dropping, knee-trembling, throat-parching discovery.

The word 'poll' was the number one most favouritist way to describe the sampling of consumer opinions on the subject of Xmas parties. 'Poll' easily beat lesser nouns 'survey' and 'research' - a whopping 66.6% of PRs favoured the four letter word to its lengthier counterparts.

PCP went to interview Poll at its home in Ashford, Middlsex. After several unsuccessful attempts to get Poll to answer the door, we shouted through the letter box, only to receive the following reply: "F*** off! I'm busy inserting myself into a press release. And another. And another. Uh, yeah, you like that don't you press release? Say my name, *****. I'm Poll Daddy, *****!"

Trying another tack, PCP spoke with the slick and dashing Mayfair publicist, Max Cliffe. Cliffe said: "Survey has become a dirty word in this town. Poll has more mass appeal; your ordinary man on the street has a mental age of a 13 year old - we're talking 70% of the population, here. That's why X-factor is such a hit. It's a small word - like Sun, and Star and Mirra - and that means it's easy to read. Research, on the other had, is more high brow, yet much more credible. But the truth is, there isn't a publicist in town that knows how to wield it's awesome power. Or how to spell it."

Friday, December 01, 2006

Pop Culture Phrasebook offer: Mel Gibson available for racism workshops

Looking for a celeb to front anti-alcoholism, or racist campaigns? Then look no further than your friendly, neighbourhood Pop Culture Phrasebook. Thanks to an exlusive offer through our sister PR agency, the Pop Culture Reputations, Inc.*, we can exclusively offer you Mel Gibson available for any kind of brand work**.

You may have caught Mel advising Michael Richards - Kramer from Seinfeld - on how to recover from being caught making dodgy racist comments in public. Richards recently told two black hecklers in his stand-up audience that "50 years ago, we'd have you upside down with a ****ing fork in your ass," as this report attests. Racist Gibson said, "I like him," and said that "They'll probably torture him for a while and then let him go." Thankfully, this is ego-crazed celebrity racist Mel Gibson, so we know he's not being totally, utterly flip. Because he's a Hollywood star. With a major ego. That's-why.

The recovering alco-racist recently hit the headlines for his driving the "JP (Jewish Princess) Widow Maker-mobile" car around Hollywoodland whilst drunk out of his tiny, eggshell mind. He also made a series of anti-Semetic comments and was abusive to a couple of ever-saintly LAPD' cops. Luckily, the Catholic fundamentalist, Mel, apologised and has since made a full recovery: He's vowed never to apologise again for such racist remarks in public again without his fingers crossed behind his back.

So if anyone knows a thing or two about a thing or two, particularly is those things are racist, it's grandmaster (Grand Wizard? - Ed) Melly G and his furious bile. And that's why we're offering you this chance to not only get a major celebrity to endorse your campaigns, but one who knows all ab out being a dumb, drunken racist idiot. Word.***

*This is not a real agency
**Not strictly true
***Not, uh, a real article

Ordinary person visits Malawi, doesn't get any publicity

An ordinary Scottish woman who visited Malawi this month in bid to generate personal publicity, has today admitted spectacular failure.

Jean McCracken, a 50-year old widower and primary school teacher, had followed in the footsteps of celebrities who have made the PR pilgrimage to the poverty-stricken African country in a bid to start a media frenzy. However, the country, portrayed as a media hotspot, has failed to live up to the hype. As a result, Jean has spent weeks waiting for a press reporter and photograher swarm that has never appeared.

Speaking from an orphanage, where volunteer worker Jean was doing one of a clutch of daily tasks as volunteer, she said: "Malawi has been all over the media in the past month as one of the world's top destinations to go to get publicity, but so far I've had nothing. Evey day I see celebrities advertising it as easily the best place to raise their profile and gain public sympathy - people like Madonna, Brangelina, and Melinda Messenger. The attention that offers them untold fulfillment was meant to be within my reach. Well the PR around that country is nothing more than hype - I've been here a week and not done a single photocall. "

The Pop Culture Phrasebook caught up with leading publicist, Max Cliff, to offer Jean advice on how to turn this crushing negative into a positive. Max said: "How much are you paying?"

Meanwhile, non-celebrity Jean is stranded in a publicity vacuum. The non-celebrity is forced to busy herself with mundane, achingly meaningful tasks such as teaching orphans critical life skills and vital, basic educational skills. Rather than publicity, she has had to make do with little more than love, affection and appreciation and the empty feeling that comes from genuinely helping a suffering people.

Meanwhile, every day Jean remains tortured by the memory of the media frenzies in the country around celebrities like Madonna. The reptilian, ego-on-skeletal legs generated worldwide media coverage in a massive Malawian PR stunt. On her recent baby shopping trip, the singer attended a string of press-friendly photocalls in various, tribal villages. This included reading her failed children's book in English to Chichewa-speaking Aids orphans, and doing sexed-up dance routines from her latest world tour to children under the age of sexual consent, and her famous 'cruxifiction' routine, to staunchly Christian villagers.