Paul Burke is an award-winning advertising copywriter
Three cheers for Jeremy Vine. At last someone has pointed out that cycling in cities is inherently right-wing. Full disclosure: I’m a cyclist. I may not own a square inch of fluorescent or Lycra apparel; I may not terrorise motorists with violently bright and flashing lights but I’ve been riding a bike around London since
Has the advertising industry been nationalised? It certainly looks that way. The run-up to Christmas is usually the time for UK advertisers to spend big. But not this year. While the John Lewis Christmas ad has been greeted with some fanfare, this is the exception, rather than the rule in 2020. Companies whose businesses have been
‘Hello, is that Paul?’ ‘Yes’ ‘This is Alan Parker. I’ve just read your new book. I thought it was terrific and I want to talk to you about it. Are you free for lunch next week?” ‘Yes!’, I practically yelled. The following week, I found myself sitting opposite one of my advertising and film-making heroes,
We’ve all been very impressed, haven’t we, by Sir Keir Starmer’s performances at Prime Minister’s Questions? His calm, precise and forensic dismantling of Boris Johnson has drawn praise from all quarters. Quite right too. An effective Leader of the Opposition is vital to any democracy and at last, we seem to have one. An eminent
We all have secrets which, when we remember them, shroud us in shame. I’m afraid I have a particularly dark one that I’m forced to remember almost every day of my life. Twenty years ago, I was a working in a big London ad agency with a smart and ambitious young man named Richard Reed.
Am I allowed to mention Nigel Farage? Of course I am, this is The Spectator, and its readers enjoy analysing all kinds of people and ideas, even those they find unpalatable. Readers of Campaign, however, aren’t quite as broad-minded. Campaign is the trade magazine of the advertising industry, and when it published an interview with
There was once a belief that for TV and radio commercials, a Scottish voice was more ‘trustworthy’. This was particularly the case for financial services ads. It was, however, a belief entirely without foundation. ‘We made it up,’ a banking executive once told me. ‘We’d moved our call centres up to Scotland, so we decided
