Press Release Me, Let Me Know

In my diversified role as a journalist I receive a number of sporadic weird and wonderful press releases from all manner of PR agencies. Usually, they concern matters that in no way relate to my usual course of writing. However, some of them actually hold a few interestings morsels of information, things that I never knew or that are hot off the press. Some of these should, really, be openly shared with the world so it too can feed off the juicy goodness.

So I’ve decided I’m going to screen these factoids and carefully select the genuinely appealing ones, for your benefit, to collate into in a weekly news blog I’m calling ‘Press release me, let me know’ (a-haha). This compendium of useless information may or may not work. It all depends on what random schemes I’m sent by the PRs. So if you know of, or indeed are, a PR who has something compelling to say, let me know.

Below is the first installment and so far I think you’ll find that I’ve uncovered some quite delicious yet totally trivial stats and facts.

Charity cheeks

Hurry! You have only until March 17th to bid for Mariah Carey’s clobber. To celebrate the release of Katherine Heigl’s forthcoming movie - 27 Dresses – 27 celebrity dresses (see what they did there) are being auctioning off for charity. The worthy cause is The Lavendar Trust for Breast Cancer Care and Ms Carey has just thrown her butt-revealing pink tunic into the ring. The price now stands at £300 with three days of bidding to go.

Current bids include the ‘Feel My Hits’ Sugababes combo at £350, Danni Minogue’s long silver slinky at £376, and Lorraine Kelly’s evening gown trailing on a pitiful £102.

To see how the bids are climbing (or not) check out:

www.ebay.co.uk/27dresses

Now let’s move swiftly on to the exciting world of cheese.

Softie

Somerset Brie, Organic Somerset Brie, Somerset Camembert and Capricorn Goats Cheese are all manufactured by The Dairy Farmers of Britain (DFoB). Apparently, it takes 20 litres of milk to make their 2.4kg Brie and their Camembert, which is allegedly best served with cider, is the current Nantwich Cheese Show Champion Cheese. Well I never.

Game on

Have you ever asked the question “how many bleeding games consoles are there in the world?”. Well, hopefully this tasty data will aid your analysis.

Since November 2006, 10 million Playstation 3s have been sold across the globe. Since April 2006 (that’s less than two years), Playstation 2 has dished out over 26 million units!! This all comes about because the PSP - which sold 20 million units in the same time frame – is about to release its Go! Messenger service. Splendid entry.

Random hotel fact of the week

Lâ Hotel (as it’s cleverly known) is the ONLY British-owned independent luxury hotel in Paris and, according to Harper’s Bazaar, is ‘The Best City Hotel in the World’. It is also claimed to be the hotel where Oscar Wilde lived and died. The restaurant (cleverly known as Le Restaurant) was recently awarded a Michelin Star. How about that!?

KitKat stats

Choc fans, are you ready? The new 165-calorie-per-bar, Girls-Aloud-endorsed KitKat Senses snack is soon to be released and, accordingly, I have been supplied with some astonishing stats about the breaktime phenomenom:

- KitKat is the #1 UK biscuit brand
- Over 1 BILLION KitKat bars are eaten every year, 37 every second
- Over two-thirds of KitKat consumers are blokes
- And here’s my favourite one, if you laid out a year’s worth of KitKat Chunky production it would stetch from Land’s End to John O’Groats. FIVE TIMES!! Choctastic!

In further chocolatey news…

Eggie

Prestat, who are releasing a dark chocolate and crystalised ginger Easter egg for £22, are the purveyors of fine chocolates and truffles to Her Majesty, The Queen. No kidding?



The Wine Society Maydie

The world’s largest wine club, with over 100,000 active members, is, funnily enough, The Wine Society. It supplies over 1,000 wines at any one time. It is Wine International magazine’s “Wine Merchant of the Year”, Which? Wine Guide’s “Best Mail Order Merchant” and Decanter Magazine’s “Best On-Line Wine Merchant”. It is also the sole UK provider of a new Madiran dessert wine curiously named, Maydie. Supposedly, the wine ironically possesses many health benefits (when drunk in moderation, of course). It is rich in polyphenols, which are powerful antioxidants and are thought to help repair the artery cells which feed the heart. Indeed.

ID risks

How trusting of big corporations and organisations are you? Do you feel safe knowing they have identy on file? Well, security specialists GB Group have just unveiled their annual “trust” survey and discovered some engrossing news about consumers’ feelings toward securing their personal identification details.

The stats - amusingly supplied by GB Group’s PR company, 3 Monkeys - declare banks as the safest organisation with 52% of polled consumers trusting them. Central Government only received 25% of the credence and, despite more than 45 million people in the UK owning a mobile, only 9% relied upon their mobile phone companies. Gambling companies are the least trusted with a shameful 4%. Fact me!

Let’s finish this week with a snippet about child labour….

Child labour?

Well, not quite. Eat Natural – allegedly the UK’s fastest growing snack bar with 1 million bars sold every week - are now employing kids to do the dirty work for them. Their Eat Natural Lunchies are “the first food product in the UK to be made from scratch from kids for kids without anything dodgy” according to their Media Mrs, Natashia Bartlett. Not sure about the “FROM kids” bit, myself. The wholesome, fruit snack bars are stuffed with fruit but no nuts and carry the ‘ABC’ Approved By Children logo. Basically this means a permanent ‘Eat Natural Kidsboard’ of eight boys and girls must give all products the thumbs up before it ever reaches the shelves. A bit like Tom Hanks in the movie Big, only with food. What a scoop.