CAMPAIGN DIARY: Tales lose lustre after one telling too many

Kelvin MacKenzie, the Wireless Group’s chief executive, has had a

wonderfully varied career in the UK media industry, giving him a font of

good stories upon which to draw - and they were much in evidence at the

Marketing Society lunch last week.

There’s brown-nosing young MacKenzie trying to protect his editor, who

is lying pissed on his sofa after lunch, from the scary gaze of an

unannounced Rupert Murdoch. ’I can’t find him, Mr Murdoch,’ trembled

Kelvin.

’I suppose he’s lying on the sofa pissed again,’ retorts a resigned

Murdoch.

And how about Live TV: the stammering newscaster won the full support of

the British Stammerers Association, but then Live lost its nerve; what

about when Janet Street-Porter’s penchant for recycled skip furniture

cost Tony Banks his dignity when a spare nail ripped through his

trousers mid-interview; or Street-Porter again, storming into the office

of Mirror Group’s then chief executive, David Montogomery, to demand:

’That c@*!’s got to go!’ to be met with an icy: ’Which c@*!’s that,

Janet?’

Then there’s the Talk Radio host who got MacKenzie’s full blast when he

caught him wittering on about pot plants on the day Peter Mandelson

resigned.

All funny stories, but NOT when you’ve heard them more times than

Somerfield has reviewed agency. Get a new script, Kelvin, please! But

then why should a man who’s turned a pounds 25 million investment in

radio into pounds 200 million in less than two years worry about how

repetitive he sounds?

This article was first published on Campaign