ABSTRACT
The Spectator magazine writes of PR as the 'profession of the decade'. Michie (1998) declares that the UK is 'in the midst of a PR explosion'. Indeed, so fitted to contemporary Britain is PR that three authors give it the title of 'fifth estate', adding it after the fourth estate of a free press to the traditional sites of power in the realm. 1 If the PR person is an iconic figure for contemporary UK society, what are the reasons? Michie (pp. 314-15) offered two interconnected reasons: 'individuals, companies and organisations of all kinds have become acutely aware of the need to raise their profile in the news media if they are to exist in the minds of their target audiences' at a time when 'we are also caught up in an equally spectacular multiplication of available media channels'; and 'PRconsciousness is dramatically rising' and so are the business opportunities created for market-making by such 'consciousness'. In this context, note that Matthew Freud sold his celebrity PR agency for £10 million in 1994.2 The journalist Lynn Barber, who specialises in interviewing the famous, has observed that the power of celebrity PR vis-a-vis the media has increased over the last decade.3 The combined circulation of the celebrity news magazines Hello! and OK is 850,000 in the UK.
