A PR Beast of a Feast

As I sat with my other half yesterday evening watching Channel 4 news I couldn't help but comment on how inappropriate it seemed that the news item reporting on G8 leaders discussing food shortages should be accompanied by cutaway shots of said G8 leaders sitting down to dinner. It was therefore no surprise when The Guardian dropped on my doorstep this morning to see as front page news the incongruous G8 feasting and the leading subject of conversation of the day being hailed as hypocrisy on the part of the G8 summit.

As ever when I see items on the news or making the front pages, I always think about the PR people working for the various organisations behind the stories or battling with them. Sometimes I inwardly congratulate and even envy them at times for pulling off such great publicity. Sometimes I pity them. Sometimes I get angry at them. This time, however, I just can't see how they could possibly win! If I were asked to organise an event to which 8 of the guests were going to be the leaders of some of the most powerful countries in the world, you can bet your bottom dollar that I would be recruiting top chefs to provide a sumptuous feast for them! However, if knowing that on that same day they would be discussing a global food crisis you would see a certain irony on putting on such a feast. So how do you win? There's a cultural difference at stake here too - the difference between what we might consider to be a feast in the UK and what the Japanese consider to be a feast. Is eight courses really that uncommon in Japan? I served five courses to guests in my little two-bedroom Coventry terrace house on Saturday evening.

I therefore pity the PR person who might have had any say in this. On the one hand the annual gathering of eight of the most powerful people in the world is something to celebrate and ought to be celebrated in style, on the other hand if they're discussing food shortages then only the most modest of dinners (or better still perhaps no food at all) was really going to keep people happy. I think perhaps with a budget of over £200m, perhaps there are some other extravagances of the G8 summit that ought to be looked at instead of the food, but no PR person is going to draw attention to any of those now, are they?