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Great concept for this piece and a great read. I’m in Dubai where the calibre of PR is VARIED to say the least. I wonder if your Dark Side of PR is going to touch on things like Chefs Table or World’s 50 Best? 🤔

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Thanks very much. I struggled with the format for this article as I had so much good material that a 'written-through' version would either have been the length of a novella or I'd have to dump a huge amount of interesting stuff. Then I read this great article about actor Leonard Rossiter https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/oct/04/leonard-rossiter-rising-damp-fall-and-rise-of-reginald-perrin?CMP=twt_a-culture_b-gdnculture and borrowed it's format.

I won't cover World's 50 Best or Chef's Table because the newsletter is mainly UK focused and I've written several times already about the 50 Best for the UK press. It's a proper viper's nest and I don't really want to revisit it. Also, the absolute definitive article on the subject was written by Lisa Abend (who is on Substack as @unpluggedtraveler) in Fool magazine. Have you seen it? If not it's an absolute must-read https://www.fool.se/thefoodcircus/

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Must read I will—and thank you for sharing!

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A really good read, Andy, and well formatted too. I've worked with three out of your five over the years from the book publishing side, and know and like Hugh a lot too. A few very funny stories from those years!

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Cheer Matt, much appreciated. Would love to hear those stories! Part two is coming later today and a subscribers only part 3 on the rise of Gordon Ramsay is out tomorrow.

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Jo Barnes of Sauce is a legend. If I recall correctly (I used to handle the PR for Gordon Ramsay's first restaurant in Dubai 23 years ago!), she used to work inhouse for him and then set up her own agency, with Gordon as one of her initial investors I believe? Unless my memory eludes me...

You should send this lot out to Dubai to run a series of training sessions ;) Looking forward to round 2 :)

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She never worked in house no but he was one of her first clients. I'm going to do a bonus subscriber only feature on that part of the story.

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