Alice Beer

Mark Borkowski’s party

I would have thought that the first thing a PR guru would do for self promotion would be to make sure he had a bloody pronouncable name!!!!!

Great party last night at Partridges Posh Art on New Bond Street to launch Mark B’s latest tome…..Fame Formula.   Strange idea to put a lot of people and a lot of booze in a room full of very expensive “objets!”    Lots of interesting people there….. Mark dabbles in the lives of some very ecletic people.  I was sad that the mad man of the moment Noel Edmonds wasnt there….. I had my digital camera ready to capture the orbs over his shoulders (or were they just chips?)

Party really got going at Rex Cinema later and resulted in some very strange vodka induced dance routines and somebody writing their phone number on the arm of a Daily Mail columnist!!!!! 

Richard Kay’s diary said………………….
Despite anxious staff being on hand to prevent ring marks on its treasures, Bond Street fine art house Partridge’s did not escape unscathed from PR man Mark Borkowski’s champagne-fuelled launch for his book, The Fame Formula.

A table on offer for six figures had a leg damaged and TV presenter Alice Beer created her own bit of mischief. “I placed sold stickers on all the furniture before leaving”, she says.

Airbrush my arms please

Did a very glam photo shoot for Woman and Home.  These things always take you by surprise…….. really badly organised so you dread going…… and anticipate skanky clothes and bad bad  make up.  Turned up to a rail of gorgeous things I couldnt wait to try on and the most fantastic - of the moment - make up artist.  How much do they spend on these shoots?   loved the skinny white trousers so much - I borrowed them for Penny Smith’s book launch later (also kept full make up for the school run!)    Will be interesting to see the photos as I asked them to airbrush about  inches off the tops of my arms!!!!!!! 

Photos going in the issue with Madonna on the front….

The future is not orange

In fact, the future is bright the future is any colour other than orange!!!!!!!!!!

Hopping mad with a mobile network that encourages customers to be wholly dependent on their mobiles and then cannot do something as basic as switch the damn things on!!!

On Sunday I was couriered a new Blackberry - great service it came exactly when  it should….. however it is now Tuesday and Orange can still not connect it to their network!   Maddening enough - but then to call four times and be told ”you will just have to wait Miss Beer (sorry, they use first names in a really annoying way)….. have you tried turning it off and on again Alice?”   AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH 

By the way, never tell Orange insurance that you have lost your phone - say it was stolen / dropped or just evaporated - because in the most ludicrous insurance terms and conditions yet……. leaving your phone on an aircraft by mistake is “leaving your phone unattended” and your insurance is not valid!!!!!

 I have given them an hour to connect me to my own account that I pay £70 a month for otherwise I shall be having a chat with that rather nice young man at CarPhone Warehouse on the Munster Road!

Watch this space

Sleep Therapy

yesterday went for my third session of hypnotherapy to help me sleep….. well really its to help me stay asleep.  I wake at 4am and think that’s it for the night.

I have made a career out of being cynical - but this hypnotherapy lark is amazing!!!!!  I was worried about losing control - but it is all about learning how to control getting back to sleep yourself….. switching out of busy list making mode and back into fluffy cloud deep sleep mode.

Max Kirsten on Sloane Street has a “central casting” hypno therapists voice - but yesterday as soon as he started talking - I started dozing off - it is fantastic.

In fact I am feeling quite evangelical about it and am going to email FeMail right now and see if they want an article about it.

Homage to Shirley Bassey

Spent the weekend with 170,000 new best friends at Glastonbury.

What an amazing experience…….. singing along to Shirley Bassey in the pouring rain, knee deep in mud was just wonderful!  Camping and communal toilets are not for me anymore - so we squelched in and out each day and night.  I want to burn the contents of my weekend bag….. how on earth did the campers get through it….. I have never seen so much mud!   It was not what I expected in so many ways…… so vast, so unthreatening, so middle class!, so many people even older than me and so fabulous!

Fratellis, Lily Allen, James Morrison, Paolo Nutini, Amy Winehouse.. and of course Dame Shirley!  All really talented and all just genuinely blown away by the crowd, except Amy Winehouse who was just blown away! 

Definitely going back next year… tempted to get a winibago - I suspect that is the way to go!

I thought fulham was supposed to be civilised

So suddenly the white horse (Sloaney Pony) pub is the scene of gang warfare as football “fans” nut each other senseless on a quiet Sunday night in Parsons Green!

Then I am driving to drop the girls off at school (only in car because buggy wheel flat!) when a motorcyclist gestures for me to move over (obviously not seeing the woman my side of the road putting her child into a car)…… and as he drives past he thumps my drivers wing mirror.  The glass smashes and the children cry….. !  Who on earth has so much aggression at nine o clock in the morning that they vandalise someones car like that.

All very annoying and a tad depressing - but to get much worse when I call around to replace the glass to be told it is a “dealer only part” and the dealer wants £261.53 for it!

£261 for a mirror that would fit in your hand bag - how ridiculous!

BBC Breakfast

Was asked onto BBC Breakfast to be the font of all knowledge on the subject of the cost of bringing up children…….  A new survey (who on earth keeps doing these) found that it costs £180,000 to get them to the other side of university.  A little early morning maths got me to the figure that in years 1 and 2 I spent approx £1,100 on nappies alone! So for those 2 years I had to pay £2,200 and earn approx £4,000 - and that’s without so much as a wet wipe crossing their delicious little bums!

The Breakfast green room is always worth a visit - the most bizarre group of people fresh (or not so) from their duvets.  On Friday I sat between a futuroligist (how on earth do you become one of those) and the original Tinkerbell (or voice of) from Peter Pan.  Now that was worth washing my hair at 6am for!

Revolting Consumers

As you will have seen from any newspaper over the last month….. there is a revolution on the high street.  And nobody loves revolting consumers more than me!

Initiated by the very smart Martin Lewis at www.moneysavingexpert.com bank customers are being encouraged to write to their banks and demand money back for excessive charges levied over the years.

Millions of people are printing off Martin’s standard letter and sending it off to their branch in the hope of……. that’s the question.  I had a dispute this morning about what their motivation was.  I suspect that people are motivated more by cash rewards than by doing something for the greater good.  My man believes that it is consumer empowerment and a chance to fight back at the good guys.

My dilemna is that I rather like my bank and my bank manager, however, I have frequently been the victim of the £50 letter telling me I have slipped into the red (or very red).  Should I go for it and join the rebellion as any consumer champion worth her salt should?  Or should I just accept that I went overdrawn and there was a price to pay?  Watch this space……

Telephone karma

Why are so many companies employing people with the phone manners of a meercat?  And the intelligence of an armadillo?

 Last week we were away skiing and every single day at about 4pm I got a call from someone at the Bank of Scotland (sounding like they were talking through three layers of thick tartan)……..  Why do these people in call centres not put their flipping headsets on properly?

Every day I answered the phone to be asked to prove who I was by going through a series of security checks.  To which my answer was - “you called me - on my phone - tell me what it is about and then I will jump through your hoops”  Of course, we got nowhere as they refused to continue the conversation without knowing my mother’s maiden name!

 I assumed correctly that my payment cheque had not reached them on time - but how can they justify calling each and every day when I have told them to put the query in writing and I would deal with it immediately on my return.

Then I had a row with the most infuriating person at an estate agents who suddenly decided it was time to tell me that my last tennant still owed money and that they had failed to collect it ……. ten months after I had returned his deposit cheque!!!!!

 As a result of these hapless souls I have decided to develop telephone karma.  I am going to refuse to let these people wind me up…… I am not going to react and end up at boiling point…… I am going to be A.N Other Cool Customer and see if it works.

Dave’s Wife

Why is she having so much fun on a monday morning?