INEXPERIENCE, speculates the well-known political blogger, Iain Dale, may have been one reason for a cock-up by the press team at the Lib Dem’s annual conference, in Glasgow, last week.
Another, he ventures, might have been tiredness. Writes Dale: “The entire Lib Dem front bench and team of special advisers were booked into rooms on the 15th floor of the Crowne Plaza hotel in Glasgow, but it appears they didn’t get much sleep.
“The exertions of a bonking couple in one of the rooms kept the entire floor awake for most of Monday night.”
And the… er, cock-up? When the media found itself on the receiving end of ‘lines to take’ guidance for Lib Dem interviewees, including a paragraph – said to have been mistakenly copied and pasted – suggesting tax targeting of anyone earning over £50,000 a year.
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FIRST, it was a scratch music band, then it was a cycling team. By-lines took yet another new twist at the weekend, when The Herald Magazine featured a bunch of the paper’s writers – including Alison Campsie and Stephen Naysmith – being challenged to bake a Victoria sponge.
Reveals the magazine: “Overall, the judges feel the girls’ creations are of a very high standard. But they were also messier in the kitchen, with flour and sugar strewn everywhere. The boys, by contrast, were tidy, washing up as they went.”
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AND thanks to Ken Smith, of The Herald, for this one: “It’s a business being a Herald photographer at the events being covered for the newspaper’s Social pages on a Tuesday.
“Our man at a black-tie do last week asked two women who were chatting if he could take their picture together. ‘No!’ they immediately chorused.
“As our snapper looked confused one of the women took pity on a mere man and patiently explained to him: ‘We’re wearing the same dress.'”
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AND to Scotland on Sunday’s Andrew Smith, for this: “Some London PR luvvies were entrusted with handling the media for the premiere of ‘Sunshine on Leith’ in Edinburgh, the other night. Keen to give the Scottish press photographers an interesting pic, they raced round telling them that they would serve up Rangers manager, Ally McCoist… before foisting Fred MacAulay on them. An easy mistake to make, really. They are both Scottish.”
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