Iain Murray: Latest potty PR stunt is a tea break with tradition

As an unwavering supporter of ersatz royalty, I seldom miss a chance to doff a cap and bend a knee to the Countess of Wessex – the public relations practitioner who, when criticised for something or another, famously observed: “We live in a democracy.”

And so we do. Which is why I have unblushingly elected myself lifetime president of the Society for Gathering Useless Facts & Figures (SoGuff) – a body which without the services of the public relations industry would have a much diminished workload.

A few examples plucked from the groaning shelves of our archives prove the point: “Almost half of British women aged 18 to 45 favour the hedonistic life of the ladette, epitomised by Radio 1 DJ Sara Cox and TV presenter Gail Porter One in seven employees would rather clean their house than attend the office Christmas party Seven out of ten people were not treated to breakfast in bed last year, even though many said the gesture would have made them feel ‘very special’ About 92 per cent of people aged over 65 are ‘generally to extremely happy’, compared with 86 per cent of those aged 16 to 24.”

All these useless facts and figures were assembled for the sole purpose of grabbing a moment’s attention amid the clamorous and unceasing babble of news coverage. The lucky ones shone for a second or two, before falling tarnished to the dust where, but for the efforts of SoGuff, they would remain, trodden under and forgotten.

Were it not for SoGuff, who would remember that, almost a year ago to the day, Norwich Union Healthcare reported that “sickies” thrown by nearly 2.5 million workers who over-indulged at Christmas parties would cost companies £126m in lost productivity, double that of the previous two years?

And, were it not for the tireless work of our Scepticism Sub-Committee, who would be there to shout “So what?” and “Where did you pluck £126m from? Are you sure it’s not £122m?”

And who, other than Bare magazine (which commissioned the poll), now remembers that praise from the boss, meeting friends and listening to a special song are better than sex?

For readers whose memories need jogging, only half of those polled said that making love was a good way to lift their mood. Three quarters said going out with friends made them happy, while 73 per cent preferred hearing music that “gives you a buzz”.

Our files also show, courtesy of a poll by the Radio Times, that, asked what they do regularly while watching TV, 42 per cent of people eat their main meal of the day, 38 per cent do the housework, 29 per cent make telephone calls, 22 per cent read and 19 per cent cook.

A recent item, just in, shows that the most common stains tackled by the dry cleaner Johnsons include turmeric, olive oil and teriyaki sauce. Ten years ago it was tea, coffee and grass. The company’s retail managing director, David Bryant, attributes the change to shifts in lifestyle patterns. Some traditional stains, such as blood, tea and shoe polish, have fallen from the list, partly because of changing fashions. It’s pleasing to know that a taste for Indian and Mediterranean food has supplanted the traditional British fashion for bleeding on clothes.

The guiding hand of PR, which is behind so much of the gimcrack surveys and twopenny-ha’penny facts and figures that clutter our vaults, normally prefers to remain hidden. But, in a break with tradition almost as startling as our new-found aversion to bleeding, Lexis Public Relations has taken a full-page advertisement in The Spectator to boast of its achievement in conducting, on behalf of its client the Tea Council, a survey of 500 female office staff aged 20 to 35. Broadly speaking, the findings were that young working women are heading for a career burn-out but, not to worry, the remedy is a “stimulating spot of tea”.

The object of the survey, explains Lexis, was “to stress the value of a traditional tea-break, and it succeeded beyond its wildest ambitions”.

Our Scepticism Sub-Committee’s first response was to invite Lexis to conduct another survey to establish whether its first one had made a jot of difference, but it was given pause when it saw the PR company’s boast: “Our ideas are not brainwaves plucked from the ether, but the result of careful strategic thinking and planning and a great deal of experience. Shouldn’t we be thinking for you?”

It just goes to show how mistaken you can be. There we were thinking that Lexis, charged with the task of stressing the value of the traditional tea break, had shrugged its shoulders and thought, “Bloody hell, what can we do with this lemon to justify the fee? Nothing for it, it’ll have to be a survey”, when all along its brightest brains were applying a great deal of experience to careful strategic thinking and planning.

Which reminds me, according to a survey by SoGuff, 27 per cent of people aged 28 to 50 would like breakfast in bed (easy on the turmeric and olive oil, these are new pyjamas), a pat on the back, no sex and a nice cup of tea, while 32 per cent said they would prefer to wash the car. Just goes to show.