Wednesday 3 March 2010

Cranking up the publicity

The publicity machine for "Famous, Rich and Jobless" is cranking up, with trailers on the Beeb and rubbish in the papers. Today we have a piece in the Sun about the "cheating" of Diarmuid Gavin, and it picks up the description of Emma Harrison that we noted in an earlier post. "But Gavin was caught breaking the rules by show mentor Emma Harrison. And the Government's "Back to Work" tsar wasn't too impressed. Entrepreneur Emma, who is just behind Kylie Minogue in the Sunday Times Rich List after making millions through her training company A4e, revealed: 'At the start of the show, Diarmuid was supposed to give us all his cash and credit cards. But he hid a credit card from us and when he was placed with an unemployed family he didn't like it and went and stayed in a hotel.'" There's that "Tsar" thing again. We need some explanation from the government about that. The BBC's own website says only, "They are guided and assisted by Emma Harrison, founder of A4e (the largest employment agency in the world, responsible for getting thousands of people back to work), and Craig Last, a former youth worker for the charity Centrepoint, who has helped many homeless young people find jobs." Funny how Emma is getting so much publicity and Mr Last so little.
This programme threatens to be the nadir of celeb "reality" shows.

3 comments:

  1. this star hid a credit card, it just shows how tough it is to be unemployed, if these stars have to cheat to cope, unfortunatly the real unemployed cant cheat without prison.

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  2. Just read a piece in TV Choice about Ms Harrison's PR piece, sorry in depth programme dealing with unemployment.

    A few interesting titbits. It does not mention Ms Harrison by name, but instead states "Alaong the way, the four a guided by the founder of international recruitment agency A4e and a former youth worker for Centrepoint".

    It goes on (backing up what has been mentioned):

    "But Gavin & Stacey star Larry wasn't intersted in playing by the book".

    "They told me what they wanted me to do, but i didn't go along with that. They wanted to know why I wasn't running up and down the high street giving people my CV. This would be the High Street that has basically closed down.

    I'd already been into ASDA, but what are you going to do as a 62 year old? I realised there wasn't work in Harlepool for me, so I spent time talking to the locals and getting a sense of the place."

    "Taking part in Famous, Rich and Jobless has made larry relly appreciate how hard it is to find work while living on minimum cash"

    "I hope this programme will open peoples eyes. That'sone of the thing's where being a celebrity can be positive."

    Pretty powerfull stuf. Lamb it seems is simply confirming what many ex clients of 'training' providers have said all along. That buzzing around like a proverbial blue ***ed fly and playing a box ticking numbers game may look good to these companies, but is not particulary efficient. Esp if they expect every other client to do the same thing!

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  3. Firstly, sorry for the typo's above. I was rushing a bit and hate typing stuff second hand.

    Just a another thought. With any luck, Private Eye's TV Eye section reviews current TV programs. Lets hope they review Famous, Rich and Jobless in due course.

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