CopyGhosting.com launch

MalaPopulisms may have resembled a sleeping volcano, but I have not been dormant. The fruits of my labour have now been launched: CopyGhosting, a copywriting and ghostwriting service for projects of all sizes -- from CVs and slogans, to articles and manuscripts ... and everything in between.

I'm already busy with commissions, but please check out the site if you have a job you would like me to consider. Send me an email or call me to discuss your project and your budget.

Ask Stephen: the virtual booktour

Only Stephen Fry could get away with this, yet he may be starting a trend: launching a book via Twitter, cinema, webcasts and, later, YouTube, no doubt. And The Fry Chronicles is available in five formats simultaneously: book, eBook, iBook, audiobook and iPhone app.

Mr Fry is launching the tome by appearing at the various UK theatres to do augmented book readings on successive evenings: the add-on part comes from interaction with audiences in the venue and at 60 cinemas with some of his 1.8 million Twitter followers.

Real-time Q and A, and the Twittersphere will send #recommendation tags to their exponential readers. Already the Chronicles has toppled Tony Blair's Journey from the top of Amazon's UK book chart. Very smart.

All this commercial success without stepping into a television or radio studio, chatting to features journalists (although Mr Fry is doing his bit the old-fashioned way, too), going 'on the road' past the Oxford-Cambridge-London triangle, or getting your hair wet.

Where Stephen leads, other writers will follow, especially if they have a Twitter fan base.


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A room of one's own: an unattainable dream?

Where there's an online product, you'll soon find a hacker or a pirate.

The latest examples that confirm the human urge to scream 'Mine' very loudly are Andy Coulson's tenure as editor of the News of the World (phone hacking has been alleged by, most recently, the New York Times) and hacker success in distributing popular ebooks for free.

Even the unveiling of the Stig's identity on Top Gear smacks of the school playground bully, tearing off the wings of a butterfly.

At stake, personal and professional privacy, and the right to make money from electronic products.

This is a gold rush in reverse where, in a landscape where information wants to be free, no one is allowed to make money. This spells disaster to conventional business models for creative companies. The globalisation effects of YouTube, home recording and back-bedroom piracy will propel the media into a dangerous Wild West outlaw world where copyright is seen as red tape and creatives won't be able to earn a crust. The new billionaires will be the sharp-elbowed owners of the speakeasies at the edge of the law and beyond.

The likes of Mick Jagger, J K Rowling, Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood and Dan Brown represent the last of a dying breed: stars who get rich through their imaginations.


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The people's pin-up

The limits of trademarking are sometimes all too obvious. Timed to coincide with the anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, a firm of Chinese lingerie retailers has chosen to run a campaign using a Di lookalike to flog its merchandise. (Their Diana website has gone missing as I write.)

Taking the company to court would be counterproductive. The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund spent a fortune combating Franklin Mint in the States where copyright is respected; fighting dodgy traders in China would empty the coffers into a black hole.

Other than tasteless publicity on a sad anniversary, the Fund should use unofficial channels to explore ways of shutting down the trade. A trademark infringement case, should it go wrong, would simply open the floodgates to products seeking their main chance.


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Live from Easter Road: Thompson 1 Murdoch 1

At the Edinburgh television festival's MacTaggart lecture, the BBC director general, Mark Thompson ordered a dish of hot revenge from the media menu. His target was James Murdoch, Sky's chairman, who roasted the BBC during the event's speech last year.

What would be more impressive than the knockabout jousting would be a smidgen of mea culpa. But media moguls are politicians these days and have to be seen to avoid Gerald Ratner-style 'crap' gaffes. You can't admit to naffness without adversely affecting the next BBC licence-fee settlement or the next morning's Sky share price.


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Wikileaks: the new Amnesty

The USA hierarchy is steaming about the Afghan papers put up on the web by Wikileaks. Where Amnesty International trod by raising publicity about whistleblowers and democrats held in prison and/or being tortured, Wikileaks has posted classified information from the aggressor's mouth.

This is The Bourne Identity for real. What price for the US secret services persuing the Wikileaks board and information moles with every thing they have got. Welcome to spying in the 21st century.


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The Prints of Darkness

Peter Mandelson's political memoirs, The Third Man, are shining a torch on to the divisions between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair when in government as New Labour, especially over the inference that Blair promised to hand over prime-ministerial power to Brown in 2003.

But whatever happened to Chatham House Rules? When is it a good time to publish political autobiographies? The best option is immediately after a general election loss, despite the risk of short-term damage. In this case, any furore will have died down by the September party conference, when a new leader will be chosen.

Presumably Lord Mandelson must feel his front-bench career is over to be quite so candid. Whether this is a wise decision or not will become clear in the next few years as the coalition will live or die by the outcomes of their draconian policies.


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Solent sympathy

When does criticism of a business leader go too far? When the mob sense blood but go for the wrong target.

Tony Hayward, BP CEO, was photographed on his yacht at Cowes on the Isle of Wight taking part in the Round the Island race with his sons.

Yes, he was taking time off. Yes, he was enjoying himself. But surely he'll be all the more refreshed for taking time out before going back to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

And, anyway, Mr Hayward has delegated day-to-day responsibility for the disaster to an American called Robert Dudley, so maybe the US public may react differently to having a fellow countryman in charge of sorting out the mess.


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Alan Bennett and the ice-cream robbery scam

Alan Bennett, the famous diarist, playwright and Beyond the Fringe veteran, has fallen victim to a con in central London where two women splattered his raincoat with ice-cream and offered to clean it up, while stealing £1500 he had just withdrawn from his bank.

The probability of being robbed in the street does not vary whether someone is well known or not, but the silver lining for Mr Bennett is that he can write about it in his diaries. The episode might even be the kernel of a new play.

This would be an interesting form of revenge, turning adversity into profit while highlighting the scam to warn off repeat offences and copycat pickpockets.


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Obsession for jaguars

Ethological engineering just took on a new definition in the wild world of jaguars.

Conservationists in Guatemala have built of the findings on scientists at Bronx Zoo in New York City, who experimented with 23 different scents to attract the animals to camera traps. The outright winner was Calvin Klein's 'Obsession for men': the musky scent grabbed the jaguars' attention for 11.1 minutes on average.

In the wild, the scent is proving hotter than catnip. Male and female jaguars rubbed their cheeks on rags sprayed with the cologne fulfilling the hope that images of the creatures could be captured by heat- and motion-sensitive cameras. Little-seen behaviours, including mating rituals, have been captured on film.

If the marketeers at Calvin Klein have any sense, it should be a no-brainer to revamp their 'Obsession for men' ads with images of jaguars and other big cats along with a slogan like 'Bring out your wild side with ...'


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Wither the watershed?

Mary Whitehouse is probably spinning furiously in the proverbial at the publication of the latest research from Ofcom.

The British public are apparently relaxed about swearing on television, the culprits even being lauded as role models. Gordon Ramsay has changed the 'bounds of acceptability' almost single-handedly, but his moment will surely pass eventually.

There must still be boundaries, though. Children's programming should be ring-fenced, but where is the limit of protection?

Would Doctor Who ever be profane? Would Radio 1 condone cursing rather than simply tolerate it? Would The X Factor ever entertain bad language?

No ... perhaps. Language limits are always on the move. Eventually people will get bored of excessive swearing, and the expletives will either disappear or youth culture will invent a new rude toolkit of words with which to frighten the media horses.


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The publicist behind the footballer

An interesting spin on Paul Scholes' decision to turn down Fabio Capello's invitation to resume his midfield England career, six years after his international retirement to concentrate on Manchester United, his family and his telly.

Apparently he would have accepted the call he had been given more time to consider the offer: i.e an opportunity to play in the World Cup qualifying competition. Mr Scholes says he would not have wished to take the place of a player who had been involved with the team over the previous two years.

Methinks I detect the voice of a skilled publicist, spinning a positive line on a decision Paul Scholes was always going to make.


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A modern Aesop fable

The moral of the story: if you leave your back door open on a hot summer's night, and if a fox chooses to enter your house, and if you have babies asleep in their cots, you run the risk that the said foxes will attack the children.

This is what foxes do, nature happens despite the individual trauma within families this kind of incident causes.

The moral derived by the tabloids, however, will be to mount a cull on urban foxes: a campaign designed to placate readers' fears.

We often forget that human beings share the planet with wild animals, and that sometimes their agenda is different to ours.

So, the ultimate lesson to be learned: close the door and open a window, instead; preferably out of fox-jumping range.

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Culture wars at Al-Jazeera

The Arabic news channel, Al-Jazeera, has got its knickers in a twist over its female presenters, accusing them of not wearing enough clothes: not in the Naked News sense; more like Burka News.

The presenters have quit.

Is this modest protestation going to make any waves in the Arabic world? I doubt it, somehow.


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Musical chairs at the Treasury

If John Paul I was the Pope of the moon (he died in office after 33 days), then David Laws was the Cabinet minister of the honeymoon: he resigned today after 18 days over an expenses claim blunder masquerading as a privacy issue. It was the Telegraph wot dun it.

Welcome to the political pleasuredome. Life in power can be nasty, brutish and short, although with the swiftness of Mr Laws' departure, he may well be back after the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has had a rake over his rent arrangements.


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Queen's Speech: libel law to be reviewed

Allegedly.


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Sarah Ferguson and the toe-curling sting

The News of the World does it again. English 'royal' gets entrapped taking the cash and sipping the booze.

Still, look on the bright side: the Duchess of York didn't use the old Russian mafia excuse.


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Play nice with Synthia

Dr J Craig Venter is at it again. Ten years ago he was trying the trademark the human genome like the antithesis of Tim Berners-Lee. Now he has 'created' the world's first organism not created by natural selection.

Synthia is a synthetic single-celled creature, a new kind of bug. Like any stride into the scientific future, the good side can be contrasted with the bad: is this a road humankind wishes to rush down, or a dangerous cul-de-sac.

The achievement is startling, but the conversation has just begun.


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Olympic dash to trash mascots

The case for the prosecution: the internet art-hackers have already struck.

The case for the defence: previous Games avatars have had an airing.

The rush to lampoon Wenlock and Mandeville is no bad thing: the mascots have struck a chord, and will presumably any time soon be guest-appearance in a new episode of The Simpsons.


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The torture defence

Hmm. Immigration policy may be tricky to implement this new parliament. Two Pakistani students, alleged to be linked to al-Qaeda, have been judged to be dangerous but impossible to deport due to the threat of torture or possible execution back in the old country.

Western values trumps the law of the jungle in this case. Perhaps there ought to be counter-madrassas, teaching against fundamentalist religion, here in the UK and perhaps in the USA? But who would teach the curriculum? Presumably moderate Muslim clerics?


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