Hello there and welcome to another week in the world of public relations. I was taken aback by the number of people who sent kind words about the latest Barr (4.0) arrival. Thank you.

Moving on to this week’s hits and misses from PR land.

Oasis Definitely Maybe getting back together

Great PR for warring siblings and music lovers alike. In the week where Kier told us all that things were only going to get worse and that we had to Roll With It, the nation needed an uplift and it came via the unlikely source of Rock’n‘Roll Star duo, Noel and Liam.

Despite being Half the World Away with their love for each other, they have put their differences to one side to play a series of concert dates, with tickets going on sale this coming weekend. The positive media surrounding the announcement shows the Supersonic sway that the band still have.

The boost the economy around the areas where the concerts will take place will be a huge win. Despite the naysayers claiming that it is only happening because the bank account balances are falling, I don’t care and I can’t wait.

Don’t Look Back in Anger at rip-off Britain

Whilst the Gallagher brothers were rolling out a strong media campaign that brought joy to great swathes of the country, there is always someone waiting in the wings to poop on our party. Step forward Holiday Inn and Maldon hotels in Edinburgh and Manchester respectively.

As soon as the tour dates and venues were announced they sent their prices Up in the Sky. Even worse, Maldron cancelled some bookings that had been made for those dates, claiming a tech issue, and then resold the rooms as a much-inflated price.

They certainly have some Mucky Fingers and are yet another example of brands who make all the claims to do the right thing by their customers, ride roughshod over those claims when they can spot a chance to make some money. Very Bad PR for both brands.

Elon to the rescue

Boeing’s PR woes are going from bad to worse. Not only have the issues with its Starliner spaceship meant that two astronauts are stuck in space, but they have now had the ultimate blow; the shy and retiring Elon Musk is going to save them.

Musk’s rival space taxi firm, SpaceX, has been picked by NASA as the rescue vehicle of choice to get the two space travellers back down to earth. We can only assume that NASA has issued a strict STFU to Musk because he has remained very quiet about his rescue operation.

Musk may be everyone’s favourite pantomime villain, but he has enjoyed some rare positive media of late. His interview on X with Donny T may have been blighted with tech issues, but it was still one of the biggest broadcast attempts of its time. And now this, one of his brands being used to save people’s lives and he is being unusually modest about it.

It has certainly been a complete U-turn on Musk’s usual approach to publicity and it appears to be paying off in terms of his popularity over in ‘Merca.

Lidl stands accused 

Nature’s most painful teddy-bear, aka, the hedgehog is facing threat from an unlikely source, Lidl. The German discount supermarket hero is being accused of selling hedgehog dens in its famous middle aisle that are allegedly lethal to the small spikey creatures.

You can imagine the poor press officer that took the call about this story at Lidl HQ. An eagle-eyed hedgehog rescue owner spotted the dens in the middle aisle as they hit the shelves in Northern Ireland and immediately posted her frustration on Facebook.

Lidl was then informed of the danger they presented and said they had sold thousands of the dens across Europe with zero issue or complaint. As a precaution Lidl has removed them from sale in Northern Ireland, but they remain on sale across the rest of Europe.

The hedgehog botherers claim that the shape of the bed can lead to them being trapped and can also create damp inside, which then freezes the hedgehog to death in the cold weather. For now, and for dearest Northern Irish hedgehog, the Lidl middle-aisle murder campaign is over. To reiterate, I really do feel bad for their press office.