Deliverables, who the hell came up with that idea? Calling it managing expectations was bad enough. That was basically where, in our game for instance, you'd write a story and tell the client you were hoping to get it into a paper. Then it appears in three papers and they think you're a genius.
It was all a bit Bruce Forsyth. Could we get it in four papers? Lower, lower. Okay, the client would be really happy with two. We'd get three and everyone thinks it's a job well done.
Now it's frigging deliverables. PR tells the client that the story will be read by 16.8 million people. That's the deliverables. It's always plural, apparently. But since when was PR-speak English as we know it. And it's such a guessing game when it gets to that stage. You get it in the Daily Mail but it also makes the website. So on the basis that every copy of the Mail is read by 3.4 people, you tell them that's worth around 10 million. The website is, of course, read by a completely different crowd - mainly neo-Nazi expats who think the country is being run by Muslims - so add an extra couple of million on to the total.
Then if you get something in Metro and assume that everyone who commutes reads it, then you get up to your deliverables target. Simples. Unless you've promised 16.8 million AB1 readers, in which case you may have to knock off at least 75 per cent of Metro readers and 63 per cent of expats, of course. Or maybe you've promised 16.8 million pairs of eyes seeing the brand of whom 27.5 per cent must be in the top quartile of owners. You see, it gets more and more complicated. I'll just stick to getting it in a couple of papers, let that be followed by various English speaking newspapers in India, then the BBC does it two days later, and then the papers who didn't do it first time round decide it's worth doing after all and use it four days after we originally filed it.
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So I'm on the escalator at Holborn station going towards the Central Line behind a young man dressed as a Norman knight. He goes to platform dressed in a woolen tunic with a scabard and full length sword. Being polite, he is carrying his silver, metal helmet. He wears tights and boots with criss cross Malvolio-style laces up his leg.
He walks along, his sword swinging happily off his belt, past two British Transport coppers. Behind him is some Asian lad with a Fitness First rucksack. Guess who gets stopped.
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Went to the one-day international at the Oval this week on tickets bought and paid for rather than corporate and, out of all the seats to buy, I end up next to former Today and Mirror associate editor Mike Brown and ex-People editor and the man who edited Alastair Campbell's diaries, Bill Haggerty.
I shouldn't be surprised. Cricket attracts this kind of crowd.
I don't think there is another spectator sport which is attended by so many men wearing fawn coloured clothing. It's like 1,000 adult men are simultaneously auditioning for a role in Our Man In Havana.
It's not even as posh as you probably think. There are an awful lot of people who go to both football and cricket matches, it's not as elitist as many assume.
But they behave differently. It's not even the drink. At football you have a couple before the game, one at half time and a few afterwards but outside the ground.
Cricket is, of course, intentionally broken up with specific breaks in which to go and get pissed. They call it lunch and tea, for heaven's sake, not half time or quarter for instance. And you can buy up to four pints at a time and take them to your seat.
You get a big screen showing controversial incidents without the crowd rioting and the fans all mingle. Plus, for a sport that is supposed to be archaic, it has brought in television reviews of big decisions while football dithers over new technology even though it is the latter where millions of pounds of revenue can be won or lost over a split second refereeing error.
No, there's a lot that's peculiar about cricket but there's an awful lot that they get right. If only I could actually understand the game itself, I'd be laughing.
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Never trust anyone who....well, the list is endless, but here's a start. Never trust anyone who wears a 'comedy' tie, whose eyebrows meet in the middle or who refers to themselves in the third person.
When I covered industry for The Sun and had to attend the annual TUC conference, a number of us - mainly me a reporter from the Morning Star what we nicknamed the Battleship Isolda - had great fun watching the legendary Arthur Scargill who also referred to himself by his full name. Hence a speech we all learned by heart one year in which he said: 'And Arthur Scargill, president of the National Union of Mineworkers says to conference, will you get down on your knees and surrender to the jackals and hyenas of the capitalist press or will you stand up and fight because, brothers, Arthur Scargill is ready to stand up and fight.' It was pure magic. Completely pointless as he lost whatever motion he was proposing, but magic nonetheless.
Solly says good night, comrades...good night, Solly
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