I got three sets of questions sent to me today. One was from a U.S. professor who is writing a worryingly comprehensive book about writing to sell. One was from a client in Asia who wanted to know how often …
Read MoreBlog
Here’s another fine selection of messes I’ve got myself in – but you can get me out
I have always had a strong fellow-feeling for Stan Laurel, as: 1. He was like me a Lancashire man. 2. He was always being blamed for getting himself and his colleague into fine messes. The difference between him and me …
Read MoreA lesson in bad writing – and Boris Johnson’s folly
Here’s the heading to the kind of White Paper that deserves to be carefully torn into squares and stuck in an outside toilet: “Leveraging Rapid Process Application DevelopmentDeployment, Adoption and Use for Business Value” This was followed by the opening …
Read MoreGeorge Clooney, Jamie Oliver, Oprah Winfrey – and my butterfly mind
How interesting to compare useless sluts like Paris Hilton with people like George Clooney. He puts his fame to good use and is off to Sudan to try and see what is up with the elections being run by the …
Read MoreWhen I was 16 … and a mystery
I went to France to live en famille and learn the language. My timing was a bit off. I arrived on the day of a general strike. Not good, as we – my French exchange partner Gerard Thaler and I …
Read MoreNothing changes
My beloved just bought me a gigantic book of old New Yorker cartoons. This one dates back 77 years to the last great financial collapse. It reminded me of my recent post about Cameron and the mystical “we” politicians always …
Read MoreIf you want to survive, you must understand this marketing miracle
What lives on when people die? What persuades people to pay more for something that is no better than alternatives – and sometimes worse? What makes otherwise sane business-people spend millions for no seemingly sane reason? What should always be …
Read MoreTap-dancing round the truth: is Cameron as good as the Bliar?
I see Mr. Cameron has told us we have some “heavy lifting” to do to tackle the dreadful deficit. This reminds me of the old joke about the Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian side-kick, Tonto. They were surrounded by …
Read MoreTypical landing page rubbish: 231 words, one misprint and not a bloody clue
>You really have to wonder how some people survive. I just read the landing page (wrong layout, no human being) of the utterly useless website of an agency run by someone I know who, amazingly, managed to do very well …
Read MoreA bit more about phoney art
Jean Cocteau said something very apposite about this around 75 years ago. He was talking about writing, but I believe it applies to all kinds of art: “You do not write with ideas. You write with words.” It is not …
Read More