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February 9, 2006updated 22 Nov 2022 6:13pm

Maximum Impact 10.02.06

By Press Gazette

The recent, violent rape of a young British student in Thailand who wants to waive her anonymity; the attacker of multimillionaire music publisher Lisa Voice getting an ‘indeterminate public protection order, with a provision that he serve at least three years’; and Ralph Fiennes’

two-year relationship with Cornelia Crisan are just some of the stories that have kept us busy in the past week.

We have also got revelations about two other major stars that we are either going to break or stop from coming out, depending on the information we receive in the next few days. So plenty going on as usual on the story side of things, and we’re just as manic — I’m glad to say — on the PR front too.

For some months now we have been helping with the creation of a new US TV series which is now set to make its debut over there in the next few weeks. The American Inventor (or ‘Million Dollar Invention’ as it started out) is the brainchild of one of my clients, Peter Jones, mobile phone tycoon and judge of the popular BBC2 series Dragon’s Den. Over six months ago we introduced Peter and his idea to Simon Cowell, who fine-tuned it, before selling it through his Syco TV Company to ABC for network exposure. Having instigated the conception we are now helping the American media to ensure that the birth of the American Inventor makes as much impact as possible.

It would be brilliant if Peter was to achieve anything like the same phenomenal success that Simon has in the States. This is the fifth series of American Idol and the ratings are bigger than ever — with more than 35 million people watching the early stages of the series.

Talking of Simon (left), he’s been asked this week by Andy Coulson of the News of the World to write a weekly column.

We’ve turned the offer down, as we have similar offers from other papers in recent years. There are several reasons for this, but the main one is that, in my view, committing yourself to a column in any individual newspaper you run a real risk of damaging the relationship you have with everybody else.

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I’ve also turned down a similar offer for Kerry Katona, who has been pursued in recent weeks to become the agony aunt for News International’s hugely promoted new magazine Love It!, which appeared for the first time on Tuesday. The editorial team tried long and hard to persuade Kerry, but in the end we still decided no. The magazine is aimed at women between 18-45 years; and has an initial print run of 1.3 million. What was particularly pleasing about this approach was the high regard, respect and popularity that was revealed for Kerry from the editorial team and their market researched audience. When you consider the succession of nasty articles that have appeared regularly in the News of World about Kerry for many months now, it’s wonderful to find out from News International itself just how popular she is.

The fee for this column is donated to CHASE (Christopher’s) Children’s Hospital

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

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