Cranking up the publicity

The publicity machine for "Famous, Rich and Jobless" is cranking up, with trailers on the Beeb and rubbish in the papers. Today we have a piece in the Sun about the "cheating" of Diarmuid Gavin, and it picks up the description of Emma Harrison that we noted in an earlier post. "But Gavin was caught breaking the rules by show mentor Emma Harrison. And the Government's "Back to Work" tsar wasn't too impressed. Entrepreneur Emma, who is just behind Kylie Minogue in the Sunday Times Rich List after making millions through her training company A4e, revealed: 'At the start of the show, Diarmuid was supposed to give us all his cash and credit cards. But he hid a credit card from us and when he was placed with an unemployed family he didn't like it and went and stayed in a hotel.'" There's that "Tsar" thing again. We need some explanation from the government about that. The BBC's own website says only, "They are guided and assisted by Emma Harrison, founder of A4e (the largest employment agency in the world, responsible for getting thousands of people back to work), and Craig Last, a former youth worker for the charity Centrepoint, who has helped many homeless young people find jobs." Funny how Emma is getting so much publicity and Mr Last so little.

This programme threatens to be the nadir of celeb "reality" shows.