TV’s Best Ever PR. Totally.

Howard Bowden, head of news, Clarion Communications

For the last 20 years, Edina Monsoon - you know, ‘Eddy’ in TV sitcom Absolutely Fabulous - has been the default setting in the minds of the Great British Public when it comes to picturing a PR person in all her or his glory.  As comedy characters go, she was pretty good, and as a caricature for the excesses of PR-dom - particularly for anyone who doesn’t actually work in the industry - she was even better.  Yes sir, no-one could top Eddy as TV’s ultimate fictional PR person.  Until now.

Ladies and gentleman, please be up-standing for the awesome, the staggering, the totally switched-on Siobhan Sharpe, head of brand at Perfect Curve - who, of course, is the creation of actress Jessica Hynes in award-winning BBC comedy series Twenty Twelve, which reaches its climax tonight as London 2012 finally arrives.

It no doubt helps if you work in PR, but even if you don’t Siobhan is just about the funniest thing on TV - from the brainstorms and campaign ideas (‘Way To Go’) to the client meetings and media stunts, which obviously aren’t close to home in the slightest.  And then there’s the catchphrases.  I have so far successfully stopped myself from saying ‘holy shit’ whenever anyone suggests an idea at a brainstorm - however I am totally starting to drop the occasional ‘totally’ during every day conversation.

And there’s a punchline to all this: the other week, just because I could, I tweeted that one day I’d like to work for Siobhan’s agency Perfect Curve - and within half an hour I’d received a reply from @perfect_siobhan, telling me to send in my CV, because she would totally look at it. Genius.

Is it a cunning bit of BBC social media? Is it a (v. funny) PR industry colleague? Is it the real Siobhan Sharpe?  Who knows and who cares.  PR, the Olympics and Twitter: holy shit.