PR is the New Sex

It's seven o’clock on a Sunday morning. I'm in a fishing village in Norfolk which seems like a funny setting for a power breakfast, but here I am sitting opposite Robert Pereno over a chintz table cloth and a toastrack. He’s telling me that “PR is everything.”
Right now, I’m feeling like Alka Seltzer might be everything …. it’s the morning after Sophie Parkin’s wedding, and I was maid of honour. It was the kind of perfect wedding you usually see in movies, in a ruined manor house, fluffy spring lambs skipping around in the meadows, champagne flowing and a whole hog roasting on the spit. Sophie got married in vintage white crepe, pearls and a diamond tiara in a chapel. It made me slightly regret getting married in Wood green registry office in a dress from Topshop. But I think I carried out my bridesmaid’s duties pretty well, arranging the veil, carrying the train, signing the register, then getting totally smashed and practicing my Dirty Dancing moves on the dancefloor until the early hours .
So this morning I’m suffering for my devotion to duty, sipping on weak tea, nibbling a piece of dry toast and regretting the 7 oclock taxi call to Stansted. Robert, on the other hand, isn’t drinking. So while I am a shadow of my former self, he is fresh as a daisy.
Or even fresher maybe. Daisy Tea wanders in ..... she sang a tear jerking rendition of Edith Piaf’s Hymne d’Amour last night.
“Sorry, am I looking a bit Holywood Babylon this morning?”
I’m not sure, her eyemake-up looks a bit smudged, but that might just be a bit of residual double vision from last night.
“PR is everything, take a look at Perenoworld.” Yes, I have Wilmaworld and he has Perenoworld, and we’re sitting here in a B&B in Cromer in our parallel universes. Our separate solar systems are orbiting round the gravitational force of our egos.
By the time our taxi arrives I have the message firmly implanted in what's left of my brain. PR is the new sex.
Daisy Tea and I mull this over on the journey home, along with plans to join the Biarritz chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. Of course this doesn’t exist because French people believe that Wine is Good for You. It’s one of those unshakable convictions there’s no point arguing against, like French food is the best food in the world, French men are the best lovers in the world, Napoleon is a goody and Johnny Halliday is hardcore.
You might try, you might say, “You know I felt a bit rough the other morning after the party....are you sure wine is good for you?”
“Of course. You must have mixed your drinks - so Anglo Saxon.” They will reply disdainfully.
“But I didn’t, I was on red wine all night.” You protest.
“Aah, you must have mixed your grapes.”
So I drop the AA idea around six o’clock in favour of a cold beer on the beach. But the PR idea sticks, and I have the ideal opportunity to put it into practise at the Art Car Boot Fair the following Sunday. It's pretty much what it sounds like - a group of artists selling stuff out of car boots in the old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane, one of the chicest carparks in London. I have to do the return journey twice in a week, which might sound quite jet set to anyone who has never flown with Ryanair.
I spend the week turning myself into a product. I put my paintings on to matchboxes, badges, cushion covers and shopping bags. I even design myself a logo. I’ve no idea what to do with it, I think maybe my ego is getting out of control....but that’s soon sorted out when I get to the car boot fair.
The atmosphere is quite like a village fête - town cryers and palm readers, home baked cookies and fairy cakes. Except that it’s probably a limited edition 'art fairy cake' to be kept in the safe until the artist pops their clogs and it’s value goes through the roof. You can see a dreamy look in the eyes of the customers, comparing the bargains they’ve snapped up, imagining themselves on the antiques roadshow in years to come...
“I bought this cookie at the art car boot fair back in 2009 for just £3”
“That’s incredible, it’s now worth £30,000, except, oh no, I’m sorry it’s crumbled to dust in my hands.”
You can buy a jar of kisses or an ironic garden gnome, or leave your emotional baggage in the cloakroom. You can buy a copy of the Dark Times or go to the Pure Evil stall. And if PR is the new sex, offal is the new tofu, and the air is thick with the smell of barbequeing ox-hearts and blood pudding.
On the stall opposite mine, the Fashion Police are pulling people out of the crowd and arresting them for sartorial crimes. Vivienne Westwood’s son Joe Corre gets nicked for ‘too much Westwood’. He’s a bit of alright, and I’m kind of disappointed they don’t confiscate the offending garments on the spot - it would be a welcome diversion from watching the queues of art tourists waiting to buy Peter Blake’s signature, or Gavin Turks footprints. I’m wedged between the two and I can’t say it’s doing much for my ego. If there was ever a moment to go back to Naturism and auction off signed bodyprints, this would be it.
But it’s too late to change tack, so I launch into selling my products. The trouble is that it seems to take almost as much energy to sell a badge or a box of matches as a painting, but you only end up with a pound.
“It’s lovely, I’ll come back with my husband,” one potential customer says.
What? It’s only 99p if he doesn’t like it, divorce him.
By mid-afternoon my stall is looking a bit less professional than I would have liked. My mum and dad have arrived with sandwiches and the Sunday papers. They’ve settled down on the loungers under my pink Pina Colada umbrella along with my sister, my brother, my nephew and niece, and various men I’ve drunkenly chatted up during my PR offensive . After a few pitchers of ale I think I get the message a bit mixed up.
Every now and then I come across one of the badges that Alice, my eleven year-old daughter has made with locks of her hair on them. Although she’s said I can sell them, and they’re pretty cutting edge and conceptual, I think it might come back to me when she writes her Momie Dearest memoirs.
“My mother sold my hair to pay for drinks.”
I'm conveniently placed a couple of stalls down from Swedish Blonde Vanessa’s Casanova bar. By six o’clock I’ve abandoned my dreams of glory and turned to drink.
“How did it go today?” a friend asks.
“I don’t know, it seemed a bit like hard work this year.”
“Really?” he laughs.
It’s hard to convince people you’re working your arse off when your sitting on the bonnet of a vintage Rolls Royce drinking proseco.…….