PR queens get the royal spin in irony-free zone.

(From Irish Independent)

Journalism and public relations ought to be sworn enemies, but in reality they're the cosiest of bedfellows. Free holidays, free theatre seats, access all areas to rock gigs - offer journalists any such enticements and these supposed seekers after truth can suddenly find ways to justify supping with the devil.

PR people know this. It's the ace in their pack. Their job, after all, is to flog the unfloggable, defend the indefensible and put a good spin on the intolerable (think Goebbels), so getting journalists to sell their souls and a few column inches for a bottle of substandard Sancerre or a packet of baby wipes is easy-peasy for them.

Not all PR people are like that. Some of them even perform a service and are nice about it. These PRs tend to work in publishing and television or radio and I've even become quite friendly with a couple of them. Not with anyone in the movie or music industry, though - these are in the business of peddling celebrity and are often as arrogant and obnoxious as most of their clients, as if they're doing you a favour rather than the other way round.

And the women PRs tend to be the worst. I don't know why this is so, but they're especially pushy and aggressive and cold as a wet January day in Ballybunion. You wouldn't see their hearts on a clean plate, as my mother used to say, and I'm glad that my particular line of work doesn't involve me having to deal with them.

I don't know why I thought of these things while watching the first episode of Charity Queens (RTE1), which was about three PR women raising funds for impeccably noble causes, but I did. Perhaps it was because a slight shudder ran through me when one of them complained how difficult it was for people like herself (who "lives and breathes PR," according to narrator Marty Whelan) when "disasters like tsunamis" come along and are given the financial aid that other projects might have got. Those damn tsunamis.

Or perhaps it was because of the breathless encomiums to another of the PRs. "If you want the world saved, you just call Caroline Downey," Ali Hewson gushed, while Def Leppard's Joe Elliott raved: "If she says 'jump', I just ask: how high?" Caroline herself fretted on behalf of her generous donors: "It's not easy - people having to get dresses once a month, having to fork out 5,000 a month. It's tough." Caroline, by the way, is married to a rock promoter and the pair, Marty informed us, are worth about 90m. Now that's tough.