MCCA makes some Royal connections

In a press release, the MCCA sings the virtues of newly appointed comms officer Freddie Williams-Thomas, which include having been 'educated at Eton where he studied in the same class as Prince William for several years'.

Williams-Thomas, 23, defends such showboating, telling us he would 'like to think he (Prince William) was a friend at the time'. He says that the decision to promote the Wills link came from none other than MCCA managing director Scott Knox himself.

The MCCA is not recruiting further at the moment, but pencilling a Clarence House lunch into the diary would clearly be good preparation for its next milk-round.

And the award for mayhem goes to...

In spite of an admittedly cack-handed PRWeek staffer's best efforts, last Thursday's CIPR Cymru PRide Awards went swimmingly - with no small thanks to the Welsh CIPR vice-chair and On Screen Productions director Richard Cobourne's compering skills.

Indeed, we are still trying to figure out whether Cobourne scooped his Outstanding Communicator award for his endeavours throughout the whole of the past year, or just for last Thursday's celebratory evening at Cardiff's Marriott Hotel.

Cobourne was unfazed by our man's crash into a table laden with the glass gongs, having earlier encouraged the assembled cream of Welsh PR to 'create mayhem' in competition for a bottle of bubbly.

The most silent table, he assured us with an ambiguous glint in his eye, would be paying for the bottle, which eventually went to the raucous Working Word Public Relations.

We doff our hat and clutch our wallet at Cobourne's carrot-and-stick event management technique.