Publicists are the behind-the-scenes string pullers, the reasons why you open up newspapers or log on to a website and see the same faces again and again. Just out of shot, invisible to the general public, publicists are pulling favours with the press to get their client snapped, written about or interviewed. ‘Do a feature on this new up-and-comer that I’ve just signed up,’ they might suggest, ‘and I’ll let you have an exclusive with my big name in a couple of months.’ Their lives are a maelstrom of schedules and sweet-talking, BlackBerrys permanently attached to their hands like children clinging to their comfort blankets; their days packed with meetings over skinny lattes, their nights with more meetings over popping champagne corks. If ultimately their job is little more than a very posh take on the nightclub bouncer – ‘I can’t squeeze you into the interview schedule’ their version of ‘You’re name’s not down, you’re not coming in’ – reporters quickly come to realise that it is these super-efficient sideliners that run the show. If they say ‘jump’, we say ‘how high?’ Cross them and we won’t be getting close to the big names.
This was just one aspect of show business that I had to learn fast. Plonked into the office on my first day, I was painfully aware that my new colleagues really didn’t have the time to hold my hand and teach me the ropes. I’d have to learn the hard way by simply getting stuck in. So it was, after chasing a few leads handed to me by my new boss, I worked out that there are several types of publicist in the showbiz world, each slightly different to the other although all, ultimately, doing the same thing – getting their client ‘out there’, into the public eye.
It was with a music industry publicist – a plugger – that I had my very first dealings.
We’d just spoken on the phone and arranged, at the request of my boss, an interview with a band’s guitarist who had apparently had some of his kit stolen the night before. I was to head to a studio on Holloway Road in London and speak to the unlucky performer about his recent loss. The band were nineties poster boys – complete with floppy hair and smooth-skinned good looks. ‘What a great scoop!’ I naïvely thought as I made my way to the venue, especially excited at doing a story on a band that I’d loved for several years.
‘Just a few days into my first job and I’m already sniffing out stories!’ I congratulated myself.
A lovely bloke he was too, sitting on a giant speaker in the middle of the floor of the studio, attempting to sound forlorn at the loss of his favourite Fender. We had a good chat; with me surprised to find it much easier to talk to pop stars than to real people in the street. However, while I don’t doubt the robbery, the plugger had obviously seen this whole situation less as time for the band to sit around mourning and more as a great opportunity for a bit of publicity. They did, coincidentally, have a new single coming out and upcoming gigs to promote after all. Suddenly, thanks to some greedy thieves in North London, there was a ‘hook’ on which to get the band in the limelight again and unbeknownst to me, I’d been dragged right in. The story was mentioned on the television news that night, the band’s new video getting played in the process, and boom maybe a few more thousand record sales as a result. So, there was my professional showbiz news debut: as a stooge in a small yet cunning piece of PR spin. And this was with a credible band in the days before reality TV and endless gossip magazines – corners of the industry that now exist on a diet of such carefully fed stories – had really kicked off.
Pluggers would prove to be a big part of my life during the coming months, as I wrote my way through a roll call of late nineties musicians to fill the magazine’s pages. Some were already legends – Tom Jones, Phil Collins; others went on to have long careers – the Stereophonics and Ronan Keating, whose sales figures I had so eagerly announced back in that classroom at college. Many are now, alas, just footnotes in the history pages of pop; hello to Chumbawamba and Kavana. All of them had their pluggers, more often than not cheeky-chappy public school boys in their thirties, who dressed and behaved as if they were 17 and from Hackney. They boasted a passive-aggressive swagger that was part seasoned music industry insider, part market trader. If their drawn faces gave away just how hard they partied you couldn’t dismiss their influence. It quickly became clear that the music business was being run by frustrated rock stars.
Film publicists, though ostensibly doing the same job, are a very different breed. Like music publicists, they may have their own independent companies or they may work directly for a big label or studio. But unlike pluggers, film publicists are a mainly female race of clipboard huggers, who reek of refinement rather than roll-ups. I’ve often wondered if, at exclusive girls’ boarding schools, there’s some kind of work placement scheme within the film industry, since so many of the publicists seem to be only a few pairs of jodhpurs away from being part of the monarchy (both Sophie Rhys-Jones, aka the Countess of Wessex, and Tom Parker Bowles, stepson of Prince Charles, have worked in film and events publicity). To public school girls from the home counties, segueing into PR seems to be as natural as driving a Range Rover and holidaying at your parents’ farmhouse in Provence. Their love lives might sometimes suffer (long hours are part of the job description, since so much is done ‘on LA time’ – i.e. the middle of the night), but what these girls lack in romance, they gain in desperate journalists wanting to be their friends.
Ultimately, I prefer to work with film publicists. With their tall, slender builds and glossy hair, they might have a habit of making my genes feel extremely average, but there’s a classiness there that the pluggers seem to want to avoid. It’s like comparing Jamie Oliver to Nigella Lawson. I guess sophistication just isn’t very rock ’n’ roll. However, unlike pluggers, who all seem to have a real passion for music (as I said, they’re frustrated pop stars), it’s rare that I meet a film publicist who’s a dedicated cinéaste. But they are very good at wearing black and organising press schedules.
Every corner of showbiz has its own publicists, not just music and movies. There are book PRs, television PRs, theatre PRs, fashion PRs and events PRs, arts PRs, the list goes on. Each breed of these fixers, pushers and spin doctors might have slightly different traits but ultimately they all share one very important thing in common: without them, I’d be screwed.
The late 1990s. Rush hour. And I was cycling down Oxford Street in London. Ask me to do this now and I’d laugh in your face, warned off by ten years of accident horror stories and, more importantly, the idea of cycling anywhere in the kind of outfits I usually wear. As a green and naïve newbie on the other hand? I was off and pedalling quicker than you can say ‘Pendleton thighs’.
This was during my first few months as a salaried journalist at the magazine. A celebrity court case was taking place at the now-closed Bow Street Magistrates Court and I had been informed by my panicking boss late one afternoon that I needed to get down there, and fast.
‘Y-y-y-you want me to report on the story?’ I stuttered, wide-eyed and in shock.
‘Don’t be silly, Holly –’ She smiled at me in that kind but patronising way bosses are so good at ‘– Sophie’s down there and the batteries have run out on her recorder. I need you to get down there bloody quickly with these.’ She opened up her palm in front of me to reveal a four pack of Duracell.
Yes, my life was sooo glamorous.
‘Dappy cow should’ve taken spares obviously but there you go. If she’s not up and running in the next half an hour, she’ll miss the post-verdict statement on the steps. With shorthand as bad as hers, I can’t rely on her getting anything down. Take my bike. It’s locked up just next to the post-room. That’ll be the quickest way.’
Her other palm then appeared, revealing a set of keys to a bicycle lock. Hungry to prove myself a willing new employee, I grabbed them along with the batteries and hurried off.
Watching that cute show Call the Midwife on TV the other night,