Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Tina Brown trashes Mail's and publisher's blurb

On Sky News this lunchtime Tina Brown did two extraordinary things – she trashed the blurb on her book The Diana Chronicles and disowned the Mail's description of her as “a close friend” of Princess Diana.

Of the blurb – which describes Diana as “a manipulative, media-savvy neurotic who nearly brought down the monarchy” – Brown said: “I never wrote that, that’s the blurb. My book is more complicated than that .. it doesn’t have heroes or villains ….” Asked if she distanced herself from the blurb she replied categorically: “Yes”.

As to the Mail, it ran lengthy extracts from the book over two weeks and sold it to readers as the work of a “close friend of Diana”. Brown on Sky said: “That's just the Mail, I was not a close friend of the princess, I was an acquaintance who always approached her as a working journalist …”

A lesson to newspapers and publishers: don’t try to over-sell a canny master of sell.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

The things I could tell you about Tina!

Anonymous said...

Well tell us then!

Anonymous said...

Yes, there is nothing more irritating than the person who says, ooo I couldn`t tell you a tale about X' - and then doesn`t, goes all coy. I usually think they don`t actually have much of a story at all.
SUSAN HILL

Anonymous said...

That should read 'I COULD tell you a tale..' sorry.

Anonymous said...

One doesn't want to be hurtful

Madame Arcati said...

Lavinia! Do you really want to take to your grave - which hopefully is many decades hence - a story or two that would shed further light on the fascinating (and blonde!) Tina? You could always email it to me privately and then I could pop it up at some opportune moment and deny all knowledge of you. Perhaps you once worked with her ... out with it!

Anonymous said...

> You could always email it to me privately and then I could pop it up at some opportune momentand deny all knowledge of you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is another sample of Arcati's reckless "journalistic" ways...
But you actually have NO knowledge of her, cara, and neither do we. How would you make sure she tells you the truth?

Madame Arcati said...

Oh, there are ways and means, cross-referencing with others, the usual. But then I'm surprised a veteran journalist such as yourself didn't know that. Perhaps you're in the wrong job, sugar plum.

Alas, the Lorenzo Express would be a rather thin publication, I fear.

Anonymous said...

Honestly I'm not a fogey, as my gardener can testify, but some things really are for the drawing-room only.

Anonymous said...

Lavinia is a tease ! :-)))

Anonymous said...

> Oh, there are ways and means, cross-referencing with others, the usual.

Oh yes, that's right. Besides, it's exactly the way you worked with the Perez Hilton source, for one – even though the moral and professional authority of that man was beyond all suspicion.
Silly me! My apologies, I'm thoroughly convinced now.

Anonymous said...

That`s right, just chat among yourselves.
SUSAN HILL

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Anonymous said...

Rodrigo, darling, is that really you?

Anonymous said...

Yes, sweetness