Intriguing goings-on at Carlton Online. Managing director Phil
Rooke and his team have been tidying up their new offices at Great
Titchfield Street, formerly the headquarters of the ABC. In the process
they unearthed an ancient Rolodex containing the home phone numbers of
Dennis Healey and other former government ministers.
The dusty file also contains details of ’who to call in the event of a
nuclear war’. ’Presumably that’s for those who wanted to get expenses in
during their last 30 seconds of existence,’ says Rooke.
The numbers can hardly be relevant today but he is going to shred them
all the same. Probably just as well: in a movie, the men in dark
raincoats would appear in his doorway about now.
Hello! was keen to trumpet ’the successful conclusion’ of its high court
battle with OK!. But not content with putting out a press release, the
Hello! crew provided some extra ’notes for editors’.
The notes said Hello! was one of the ’publishing success stories of the
decade’. But the ’About Northern & Shell’ section simply gave a list of
N&S’s titles.These included Boobs, Mega Boobs (do readers graduate from
the first to the second title?), Forty and Over, Fifty and Over and Posh
Wives!.
This was clearly a move to denigrate N&S, but one thing puzzles
Hotcakes: surely no one finds any of these one-handed reads as offensive
as either OK! or Hello!
Taxi Media has sold 40 taxi-sides to the South African tourist
board.
Seeing the opportunity to provide added value for the client, Taxi Media
suggested the South African tourist board fly the 40 cabbies out to Cape
Town and Johnannesburg, so that they can tell passengers about the
country.
But the cabbies aren’t going for it. One of their number explained to (a
very pissed) Hotcakes: ’Bleedin’ ell! They give you a bag of sand
(pounds 1,000), but they’d ’ave to give me an ’elluva lot more to chance
me arm in Jo’burg.’
