Back to school for Clarke Associates

Aug 2 2008

I get along to an excellent bash – PR firm Clarke Associates moving its headquarters from Hall Green to the Old School House, Wythall.

Odd really, given that David Clarke admits he hated school – personally, I never realised he had gone to one.

We all meet up at Becketts Farm where a couple of ancient buses from the Transport Museum at Wythall are ferrying us to the venue.

I travel in an old Crosville single decker just like one from my own school days on the Wirral. I search for any remnants of the packed lunches my mother used to prepare for me, but sadly draw a blank.

The Old School House has been renovated in fine style. Mind you there is a graveyard right beside it, and my suggestion that here lies the remains of those Clarke clients who failed to pay up provokes a certain grim laughter.

David has invited along a ‘schoolmistress’ from the Black Country Museum. She is complete with cane and looks thoroughly intimidating. However, jokes about whether or not she is a ‘friend’ of Formula One boss Max Mosley fall on stony ground.

Nick Venning is there and dressed to theme – wearing his ‘schoolboy’ jacket. And Neil Pountney pulls a fast one during the group photograph. From the days when the camera would take an age to pan round and it was possible to stand on one corner, race along the back unseen and appear for a second time in the other corner.

The trouble is the guests are backed against a wall and Pountney ‘runs’ in front of everyone, rather than behind.

Oh well, it raised a laugh.

Mind you, I had to advise the boy to do less running, not more. He has a big contract with Aston University to supervise a £120 million new student residences scheme which lasts until 2014. The wags are wondering whether Pountney will make it to 2014!

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Off to the Botanical Gardens where Redcliffe Catering boss Clive Stone has put on a select little soiree.

An excellent bash, part of his 21st anniversary celebrations. No, sillies, not Clive – the company.

And talks gets round to a display of Zimbabwean statues currently holding court there. Were these funded by the detested Mugabe?

“We traded a loaf of bread for them,” quipped Clive – inflation is totally out of control in the country.

But actually it seems it is something to do with a charity effort. So, bravo. Goodness knows the place needs a bit of charity.

My personal solution to the Zimbabwean crisis is for Clive to ship his minah birds and parrots out there.

Particularly the ones which used to be in a cage beside the main banqueting hall – and had a tendency to tell you to f*** off as you passed by. Then Mugabe might get the message!

Still the birds could be a little disconcerting especially when Royalty was around. But the late Queen Mother was something of an old bird herself and took it in good humour.

The creatures’ other speciality was wolf whistling, and I know more than a few middle-aged business women around town who appreciated – how shall we put it – having their interest aroused.

The Birmingham Post campaign to bring back the Long Lunch is excellent. But I really think it should include a Bring Back Polly Parrot plea.

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Hurrah, Birmingham Press Club has finally got rid of the last of its ties – there was a warehouse full of the things.

Legal guru Adrian Hindmarsh flogged the final few at £15 a time. Not bad seeing they were giving them away for free to the winners of the recent Birmingham Press Club Media Awards.

The ties were originally on offer at something approaching £40. That was down to Central TV’s Bob Warman who demanded that they be silk.

Never one to under-dress is Bob. But journalists are no mugs and £40 is a lot of beer money.

Rumour has it that Warman has never even paid for his. Nor, despite being prodded gently by Llewella Bailey, has he worn the wretched object on television.

Why not?

“A bit dull, darling.”

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Word reaches me that long-serving Advantage West Midlands scribbler Mat Danks is soon to fire off his last AWM-headed press release.

After five-and-a-half years trying to sprinkle style onto even the driest of policy documents, the Dudley-based spin doctor finishes with the agency next week.

Though most famous for his ongoing saga with chum Pete Brookes’ geese and chickens, the hapless West Bromwich Albion fanatic has graced these hallowed columns regularly during his AWM tour of duty for everything from injuries caused by falling travellers at New Street to betting over whether or not he’d catch Delhi Belly.

But like John Bright himself, there’s no keeping Danks away from the spotlight.

He’s setting up for himself as a writer-for-hire and has pretty clear ideas about how to keep mixing work and pleasure.

“Basically, I’ll be looking to sign up as many breweries and curry houses as clients as I possibly can,” he says. “With everything else, that should keep the Wolves from my door!”

The new venture is called DCPR and bills itself as Britain’s first ethical PR company – something to do with free gratis publicity work for charities depending on how much business clients put the agency’s way.

But I have to say there’s nothing “ethical” about Danksy putting away a curry, believe me!

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OK, politicians recycling old policies happens every day, but I have discovered that our Prime Minister recycles old jokes too.

I’d been researching a piece about Gordon Brown laying the foundation stone last year of a new digital laboratory – now open – at Warwick Manufacturing Group. And came up with this great quip from the boy.

“Some of you may know that I started as a lecturer in a university and as a former lecturer I know that universities stand for objectivity and impartiality, the disinterested pursuit of knowledge and the search for truth: all the qualities you have to leave behind when you go into politics.”

Roll on 12 months and last week he was there to open the new lab.

And Brown told the same gag again.

If the current career comes to a sticky end, please Gordon, don’t turn to comedy to earn a crust.

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More news from the marriage of the century – Chris Monk, of property agents King Sturge, and Lou Jones, of C3 Consulting, finally get wed today.

Seems it all got a bit noisy on the stag night over in Dublin. So much so that at 3am Richard Goodall, also a partner at King Sturge, could no longer take the snoring of Simon Robinson, of GBR, and demanded the hotel find him another room.Which they did, and Robinson did the honourable thing the next day and paid for it.

But the others found shut-eye a bit problematical too. Of course it could have been something to do with the visits to both the Guinness brewery and the Jameson distillery.

But there was also the matter of a railway line which ran through the hotel. Yes, through the hotel.

It could only happen in Ireland!