How to be a PR professional

A couple of years ago one of my clients sponsored the premiere of Ms.Spear's movie "Crossroads" in London. Lucy and I took the features writer, Richard, from some girly teen magazine. I knew that he was gay but because of the theme of the magazine I envisaged that he would be a bit of a nelly queen.

Wrong. Trendy, very good looking with a bit of a diamond geezer quality thrown in for good measure. I don't usually go for guys with cropped haircuts, but Richard had it goin on. And on. And on...

So the premiere itself was pretty uneventful but I did get the opportunity to tell Richard afterwards my critical opinion of the movie. That it sucked mainly. The aftershow party in Mayfair was a completely different experience. Britney was a diva in the most fabulous sense of the word and spent the whole evening getting fucked up (not literally) on this sumptuous pink bed (she was in the papers the next day for two reasons - the first being that she had been an hour late for the movie and second reason being that she had drunkenly flipped the bird to several of our most eminent British photographers upon leaving the party).

Richard and I were definitely each others wing men at the party and spent the best part of the evening eyeing up Britney's hunky male co-star (forgotten his name), Antony from Blue and talking to Rachel Stevens from S Club 7. But as we got more and more drunk the two of us began blurring the professional lines. What I'm saying is it wasn't long before we had our hands up each other's shirts and were making out in the windowsill of Britney's faux bedroom.

The next day I left Richard's apartment suffering from a hangover extraordinaire and without showering cause I was late (we had morning sex for good measure). On the train on the way in I asked myself the moral question, "Does the fact that I have had sex with an important journo contact mean that I am unprofessional?" Then I figure it out - no, it just meant that I was just a slut.

Anyway, it wasn't until I actually got to work and went to the bathroom to sort myself out that I realised that Richard had left some evidence from the mornings proceedings, um, on my chest (was wearing a low cut v-neck jumper). I obviously scrubbed that issue away very quickly.

Later on that morning I got a call from the lovely Nicole, who worked at the time on the gossip pages of The Sun. "So who was the guy you were snogging last night, baby?" (I don't think she was looking for a page scoop by the way, but the need for gossip in all it's forms was obviously in her bones).

So I shared some of the details, told her who Richard was, etc. And then we had a laugh about some of the other events of the evening. Then for some insane reason I started to tell her about what I had discovered earlier in the bathroom. It wasn't until I got to a certain point in the tale that I realised what exactly it was I was telling her and that in actual fact she wasn't a dear old friend but really just a journalist buddy and that I probably needed to be professional.

"Actually Nicole, you really don't want to hear this story . It's kinda gross."

"NO! You can't do that! You HAVE to tell me!"

"Erm. I'm not sure. I think it might skew your professional opinion of me."

"Don't be so ridiculous. You should see some of the stuff we get sent here. Nothing shocks me, hon. Spill..." (bad choice of words)

So I told her and at the end of the story I laughed. But on the other end of the phone...silence. Then eventually. "Hmm. Anyway, the real reason I was calling you was to ask if you knew the name of the girl Duncan (from Blue) was chatting up last night?"

Mortified. Sometimes I really need to just shut my mouth.

Anyway - the reason that I am writing this is because this morning Lucy, the old colleague who I took Richard to the premiere with, emailed me to say that she had been to a party last week and had bumped into him. Richard and I never really figured it out after that night and never got around to meeting up again. But apparently at this party he had been grilling Lucy about me - where I was, what I was doing and more to the point was I single?

So I emailed Lucy back in so uncertain terms as to her mission. Her response:

"Leave it to me Christopher. I have high hopes for this one!"

I wonder if he'll want to mess my hair up?