What is the first thing a PR company should be?

This is beige. This is what you get
if you put 'Beige' into a search engine.

I occasionally do a spot of journalism that requires me to get in touch with PR agencies - but because I might only be picking up on a particular topic after, say, a six months absence, I quite often find that the PR person I've been dealing with has disappeared off the electronic face of the Earth (they are rather like mayflies, PR people) and so I have to go back to the switchboard and start again.

I recently wanted to get some PR information for a client of the Borkowski agency. I emailed my latest contact there - only to have the email bounce. No surprise. I looked up their website borkowski.co.uk - it wasn't there, but there was a PR agency at the bizarre address borkowski.do (apparently just so they can have the slogan 'No one can do what Borkowski do') - what the heck, I rang them, but no they don't handle the client I want - the client is now with Beige.

Now, this is something that happens as well - clients change agencies, and usually the PR companies are quite nice about passing you on. But I picked up on a certain vibe about Borkowski and Beige that made me go back to the search engine and discover that Beige had been set up after a nasty bust-up between Borkowski founder Mark Borkowski (with whom I recently appeared on Litopia After Dark) and the rest of the management. Mark took his name, and the agency left behind rebranded as Beige.

But here's the thing. They aren't Beige PR, they proudly say, they are just Beige. Well, that's all very well, but try putting Beige into a search engine. It doesn't tell you anything about PR agencies. Try Beige PR? Well, no, because they aren't called Beige PR etc. etc. Eventually, after reading half a dozen articles about the split between Borkowski and Beige I found an article with the Beige email address format, which led me (hurray) to their web address, which is beigelondon.com, in case you are interested.

I don't know about you, but I think the most obvious requirement for a PR company is to be easy to get in touch with. Journalists are lazy people. They can't be bothered to spend half the afternoon on a treasure hunt, trying to find an agency's website. Come on guys. Swallow your designer creative pride. Make sure Beige PR finds you, because Beige certainly doesn't.

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...

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