up for the cup: october's most popular post

We had an array of posts but what was number one during the month?

 by Dan Slee

It's been 40 years since the Rumble in the Jungle when Muhammed Ali took on and beat George Foreman.

Forget it being a career-defining performance for both the boxers. It's also a sport-defining performance. The yardstick that all great fights will be measured by but none will ever beat.

And so in cinema, the performance of Peter Capaldi as spin doctor Malcolm Tucker can be seen as the Hamlet of the profession. It is, of course, a satire and a pastiche and the industry has moved away from the model.

For Gurdip Thandi the real performance is not Tucker but his senior press officer attack dog Jamie McDonald. Played by Paul Higgins the PR man is more Tucker than Tucker. A raging fire hydrant of Scottish abuse that explodes at percieved slights and disloyalty.

Gurdip wrote the post after returning to journalism from a career in comms. He is in the best sense a fanboi of Jamie. Why? Because he talks like almost every comms person would wish to talk when faced with stupidity.

Higgins tweeted Gurdip to thank him for the post.

"He was fun to play. But he wouldn't be fun to be," he said.

At the time that struck me as a strange thing t say. But reflecting on it, it makes sense. Leave aside how long you may last if you tell people exactly what you think. Imagine the inner rage you need to be Jamie. Imagine how lonely that would be.

Gurdip's post is post of the month. Read it here.

2nd place is some bloke called Dan Slee with a lesson from Parliament: blogs and forums matter.

3rd place is some bloke called Darren Caveney with What A Cop Show Teaches Us About Comms.

4th place is Mike Underwood on A Twitter case A Cautionary Tale: When Twitter Goes Bad.

5th place is Dan Slee on the LGA's social media guidelines.

Dan Slee is co-founder of comms2point0.

Picture credit.