There are few tactics more effectivein the world of PR as positive celebrity endorsement. Associating clients brands with carefully selected celebrities creates powerful partnerships. Never is this more powerful than in the world of fashion where labels and brands tam up with celebrities of the moment to create a new wow factor - most notable being the highly successful Kate Moss and Top Shop collabartion.

It’s something we understand at PHA Media and use our abundance of contacts to create succesful partnerships for our clients whether their budgets are non existent or large.

The Private Clinic have benefited from associations with Henry Blofield and Tony Cowell in respect of their leading treatment to combat snoring and the home cooking MyDish website has enjoyed success with no fewer than 13 celebrity recipes including Mel C and Gabby and Kenny Logan. More recently the Energy Saving Trust successfully delivered their important and educational message with the help of TV presenter Miquita Oliver.

My good friend Piers Morgan was kind enough to give us a great plug in his GQ interview with the inimitable Marco Pierre White, a chef and a man I admire a great deal. Larger than life is a phrase invented for Marco.

Piers recalls the night we had dinner with Marco and Michael Winner in The Restaurant at the Hyde Park Hotel. It was a memorable evening in which a gargantuan meal cost more than £1,000 for four.

At the end of the meal Marco presented us each with his latest recipe book, signed personally by the great man.

It wasn’t until we sobered up the following day that we discovered he had added the cost of the books to the bill for the meal!! But then Marco never was one to miss an opportunity.

I also recall the night my wife and I ate at another of his wonderful restaurants. He asked me what we fancied to eat. “I like what he’s having,” I said, pointing at a diner at an adjoining table.

Marco strolled over to the customer and said: “Excuse me, but my friend here likes what you are having. I own the restaurant and I am borrowing your dinner. He then took the plate, brought it across and despite my protests insisted I ate the food. (The other diner, by the way was agahast, but was treated like royalty for the rest of the night).

Piers starts recording his new chat show this weekend… watch out for it. I am convinced it will be a huge success because he knows how to get a story out of an unsuspecting victim!

I had lunch with TV presenter and property guru Gary McCausland, who despite the recession was on top form. A new BBC series is about to be announced, a new book is out and he has just completed a big property deal.

Who said the age of the property developer was dead. He believes the downturn will end in property in the next six months and makes a convincing argument for why. At the lunch we were joined by the movers and shakers from the TV and publishing world, plus a few close friends.

Says a lot about Gary that… a genial host come rain or shine

Antonio Carluccio popped into the office for a chat and promptly charmed the female element of our staff  and woo-ed the rest of us with his humour and sense of mischief! He was so refreshingly honest, no false platitudes about this cook or that cook. The ones he admires he praises, the ones he feels are false - well he says that too.

It is a travesty this man is not on TV more regularly. In times of recession people return to what they know and love and the frills tends to go. Antonio is man who believes in traditional cooking and preparing food in a practical way.

Well let’s see if we can cook up some new projects for him…

A great start to the week with two clients in the Mail on Sunday. Trisha Goddard has talked about her amazing fight against cancer. Not once throughout her ordeal has she been negative and the worse it got, the harder she fought.   I have nothing but admiration for Trisha and her attitude to life. She has overcome so much - her first hsuaband died of AIDs (Trisha didn’t know he was gay when she married him); the second hubby cheated on her. She lost her sister through a tragic suicide and never knew her real father - unbelievable bumping into him by chance on a flight. He recognised her through her TV profile.   She is a brilliant TV presenter but works tirelessly for charity - you know sometimes the good guys really do win!   The other client is www.watchfinder.co.uk Their ambassador Toby Flood, the England fly half, is featured alongside my old chum Piers Morgan in Live magazine, the only glossy Sunday supplement aimed at us blokes in the British newspaper market.   Finally a huge hit for Nubeginnings, the boot camp that helps you sort our your health/weight problems in a glorious week and their beautiful retreat in Devon. Here is the piece below

FEATURES… FEATURES… FEATURES… FEATURES… FEATURES… Giles and Anna looked great for their wedding

‘We lost 2st at bridal boot camp’

ANNA BROOME AND GILES VICKERS-JONES WERE DESPERATE TO LOOK THEIR BEST ON THEIR BIG DAY, SO TWO WEEKS BEFORE THEIR WEDDING THEY TOOK DRASTIC ACTION.

By Nick Harding

With gritted teeth and aching thighs, Anna Broome urged herself up the rain-lashed sand dune. After days surviving on a low-calorie diet, her legs felt like lead and she was dizzy with exhaustion. Just one thought kept her going - how she would look in her Caroline Castigliano wedding dress.

It was the perfect gown - now Anna wanted the perfect body to wear it. And with just days to go before her big day she needed to do something drastic.

The answer was radical. But when her fiancé, Giles Vickers-Jones, suggested they both sign up for a tough bridal boot camp, Anna knew it was the ideal solution. So two weeks before their wedding they embarked on a brutal regime of diet and exercise where they were banned from booze and caffeine, screamed at by fitness instructors, and hypnotised by therapists.

Anna, 31, an events organiser from London, explains: “I knew all eyes would be on me so I had to look my best. My dress cost £6,000, but it was worth every penny, and I had to do it justice.”

With TV presenter Giles, 31, raring to go they booked a one-week course at the NuBeginnings weight-loss camp in north Devon, costing £1,695 each.

Anna, who is 5ft 9in, was 10st 7lb and a size 12, and wanted to drop a dress size. Giles, who is 6ft, weighed 14st 10lb and had a target weight of 13st.

The hard work started the moment they arrived - when they were put on a strict diet of fresh fruit, vegetables, steamed chicken and fish, nuts and grains. Anna was allowed 1,000 calories a day, and Giles 1,200.

Anna says: “I wasn’t sure if I could last the week. The food was tasty, but it was muesli and quinoa, not pasta and meat like I’d normally have, and there wasn’t much of it.”

The couple were given hypnotherapy to help them understand their relationship with food, and did a gruelling five hours of exercise a day.

“It was hard core,” says Anna. “We had to run up and down sand dunes before breakfast. There were times when I wondered what I was doing there. We helped each other cope, but once or twice I felt so low I had a little cry.”

But there were advantages. The camp helped Anna and Giles to bond even more.
She explains: “We were closer and less stressed when we checked out.”

Anna was delighted at the end of the week - she’d lost 7lb and dropped a dress size, and Giles managed to lose 11lb.

“I had a wedding dress fitting when I got back to London and the designer couldn’t believe how much she had to take it in,” says Anna.

The weight loss gave her renewed confidence and Giles, who presents ITV At The Movies, appreciated it too. He says: “When I saw her in the dress on the big day she took my breath away.”

Since their Cotswolds wedding on August 30, Anna has lost another 4lb, and Giles 6lb. Anna says: “We’ve continued to stick to the principles we learned and have carried on losing weight. We’ve both got more energy as well as more confidence.”
For more information go to Nubeginnings.co.uk.

PHOTOGRAPHY: LOU DENIM, TONY WARD/OK! MAGAZINE HAIR & MAKE-UP: SADIE HEWLETT AT TIME GILES AND ANNA HAD SPRAY TANS AT TANSTATION, LONDON (020 7929 1234) .

The British public like to sneer at reality TV shows and like so many programmes there are good and bad.

But surely I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here is one not to be sneered at.

 It is true there is 700 staff out there so it can hardly be described at a real survival show.

But nor is it a con like so many of the others. Anyone who saw Monday’s gut-wrenching grub eating challenge has to at least admit it is no walk in the park.

This is the show where the well known and the not so well known bare their soles and show if they really do have the bottle to perform the horrific tasks before them.

The challenge was won by Nicola McLean, a glamour model you are about to hear an awful lot more, partly because she is gutsy, partly because she has her own TV show on the horizon and mainly - of course!! - as she has PHA-Media handling her PR.

I understand totally why showbiz folk clamber to appear on the show, but just what is Brian Paddick doing throwing caution to the wind and displaying his truncheon to the world beneath a jungle waterfall? 

I am glad to say another PHA client, former Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, will not be joining him.

With the advent of a new series of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, I am reminded of the terrible plight of one Kerry Katona.

After Max Clifford abandoned her recently amid his accusations that she was drinking too much, a TV production company of our acquaintance asked us to meet the much criticized former pop star.

On the basis that you should also take people as you find them, rather than as they are portrayed by other, we agreed.

A meeting was set for 5.30pm in my office in Dean Street, Soho, 10 days ago.

Sadly Kerry did not arrive. I was called to be told that she was too distressed after being booed at the MTV awards the night before.

A new meeting was set up for last Tuesday. This time she did not arrive after she claimed she got half way to us, but had to return home for her medication that she had forgotten.

Another meeting was arranged but this time we stood down on the basis that we were not convinced the much maligned Kerry really wanted to help herself.

Sadly the following day I got a call from Heat magazine to tell me Kerry had been seen outside a London agent’s office hurling abuse at an associate and seemingly worse for wear.

I think we all hope she can pull herself together before it is too late… but the reality TV syndrome is something we are becoming all too familiar with.

Ordinary folk appear on a show, do well and then feel they are an example - or role model - that we should all look up to.

The Apprentice is not like real business. X Factor is not a real talent show and I’m A Celebrity is not a real test of survival - there are 700 staff out there for a start!

There is a real danger that it will end in tragedy… when ordinary people get the chance to experience extraordinary attention and then it is all snatched away from them, it leaves a deep hole, a terrible expectation, than can never be fulfilled.

At PHA Media we have met many people who have been touched by the reality TV genie then cast aside.

Kerry is not unique in being left alone with her demons once the circus moves on…