So this is Christmas and what have we done..?
Well, professionally it’s been a great year. We’ve been retained by all our major clients and done some great, award winning work for them. And we’ve won some nice new business too so we are in a good place for the challenges that 2012 inevitably will throw at us.
And there’s a whole new generation of PR professionals coming through, which means the future is in safe hands. I’ve done talks this year at Manchester Met, Leeds Met and Manchester University (twice) and it’s great to see how many of the undergraduates now see PR as a vocation and not a last resort.
We have a rolling programme of two week student placements all the year round and there is some real, hungry talent out there which augurs well. Most times the placement works well for us and for them but I did smile when one young woman submitted an expenses claim of £12 last month for cigarettes!
On the football field things aren’t going as well. We used to say that the only two teams in the city were Manchester United and Manchester United Reserves but I suspect our neighbours will be noisy for a long time to come. The only saving grace is that United are no longer the most hated team in the country.
Like many I am falling out of love with the game and it may eat itself sooner than you think. The death of Gary Speed, though, was a real tragedy. He was our celebrity guest at a Sportsmen’s Dinner some years back and he was as everyone remembers him, a fantastic person and fantastic company.
I was MBNA’s guest at the recent How-Do Football Awards and found myself sitting next to the BBC’s Colin Murray, someone I had decided I didn’t like before I had even met him. Suffice it to say he was a top bloke and even bought one of the auction items for himself when it didn’t reach the price he thought it was worth as auctioneer.
On the personal side, I am now a divorce statistic, while in a variation on The Circle of Life my 14 year old son has his first girlfriend. I hope she doesn’t break his heart like Lesley Rowson did to me when I was 12. She finished with me after one date and went off with a fourth former who she later married (and divorced.)
So what will 2012 bring, I wonder? What should my New Year Resolutions be?
- To run a half marathon again now I have a new hip. (Hard to believe that I once ran a full marathon in 3 hours 19 minutes.)
- To give up alcohol on school nights
- To find true love and happiness
Hey, two out of three ain’t bad.
But which two..?
Happy Christmas to all our readers.
Brian Beech