Are we at a tipping point with comedians? Are we getting just a wee bit sick of their insensitivity clad in the rags of ‘provocative humour’?

Last night Rufus Hound hosted the APA International Content Marketing Awards. OK: some people were laughing at his gags. But as I looked around the room I saw a lot of people visibly squirming as he laid into our industry.

If that sounds defensive, then don’t get me wrong: I can take a joke at my, and my industry’s, expense. Rob Brydon did it… read more

It’s a close Sunday afternoon, and an even closer call, as I dash up the escalators to make the Eurostar to Paris.

I’m en route to Strasbourg for Les Assises 5th European Landscape Conference and I’m supposed to be moderating a workshop tomorrow – only they haven’t told me anything about it.

Apparently I’ll find out over lunch, the press agent tells me. I check the programme and lunch is pencilled in for two and a half hours. Vive le France and its long lunches – at least I’ll have time to pull something out of the bag if I need to.

I needn’t have worried. After a long morning session in the auditorium of Strasbourg’s Council of… read more

There comes a moment with every magazine when the team’s creative work is done - and I find myself en route for the printers with a bundle of proofs, my laptop and phone.

This week it’s involved a journey to Antwerp – to our friends at DeckersSnoeck who print one of our prestige customer titles.

As I leave the Wardour team in London and tell them I am going to be in Belgium for the next 24 hours on a press pass, I see some knowing smiles at the thought of a ‘jolly’.

But little do the uninitiated understand….… read more

I don’t know whether one of my colleagues has been reading my post about memes from a few months ago, but we’ve now got our very own office meme.

The first picture appeared in the kitchen about a week ago: a reproduction of the iconic wartime ‘Keep calm and carry on’ poster, as seen on everything from mugs to tea towels over the past few years. Only here, the penultimate word was spelt ‘Carrie’ and the poster featured a picture of Sissy Spacek as the eponymous heroine of Brian de Palma’s… read more

As a journalistically-led agency, we expect everyone on the team to pull their weight by exercising their creativity wherever possible. In the case of Wardour’s office manager, Fiona Forbes Hunter, this is usually expressed in colourful emails about blocked toilets, messy fridges and missing paperwork.

But now she’s found a new outlet for her talents, as a direct result of having to deal with an unwelcome visitor to the office kitchen. That well-known magazine Pest Post (a customer newsletter for Rentokil – and no, it’s not one of our titles) runs a regular competition to write a poem or limerick about one of their technicians, under the… read more