One of my favourite news stories ever. I have a friend that is quite fond of badgers. Even this didn’t put him off. My favourite bit is “I once saw a Spielberg movie where a soldier was shot and he looked at his wound with horror on his face. It is only in the last couple of days I realise just how he managed to capture this.”

On a Friday afternoon? Of British design? A good page of links for good European design shops courtesy of Node in Berlin (they have nice work as well as nice links). Could keep you going for a few days.

I like Uniqlo stuff. They did a cool brochure a bit back. Can we have one in Manchester? Please?

We’ve been working with Yorkshire Tea now for over a year, and one of my favourite spots from our TV campaign talks about how “apparently the average person, on average, drinks three cups of tea a day.” That’s over one thousand cups of tea a year. What I find strange is for something that so many people drink so much of, so few take the time and effort to make it properly.

(image nicked from Karmarama)

Hence, I share with you my simple guide to making a proper brew:

1) Use a clean vessel (I’m steering clear of the cup vs mug vs teapot debate) By clean I mean washed, cleaned and rinsed. Not just flashed under a tap to get the remains of the last cup out.
2) Place one bag of Yorkshire Tea Gold in each cup/mug/plant-pot. There is no arguing with this. It is the best. FACT. If you take sugar, you should add it at this point.
3) Boil a fresh kettle. I’d also recommend filling the whole kettle during peak tea drinking times (8-10am, 3-5pm). Once it has boiled, don’t reboil it. This has something to do with science and the oxygen levels in the water. You don’t need to know any more than that.
4) Pour the boiling water (don’t wait for it to cool) into your vessel, but not directly on top of the teabag – try pouring it down around the edge of the vessel. This stops the leaves from being directly blasted* by the boiling water.
5) Now leave the bag for a minimum of three minutes**, probably no more than five. DO NOT STIR – you must leave time for the leaves to open.
6) Once it’s had time to brew properly, give the bag a quick stir, anti-clockwise.
7) Remove bag and place in bin. DO NOT LEAVE IT IN AN EMPTY MUG NEXT TO THE KETTLE OR IN THE SINK. Add desired amount of milk.
9) Stir anti-clockwise for five revolutions, plus an additional five for every spoonful of sugar, then once clockwise. (ie Milk, 2 sugars = 16 circulations in total.)
10) Serve/ enjoy

Please note, I’m not going to give you a pantone reference number or anything like that. How strong or weak you want your tea is entirely up to you. The above information has purely been designed to help you get the best out of your teabag. Please use it wisely.

* this is not a technical term
** Some people suggest that this is a waste of time, but try using that time wisely by emptying the dishwasher or sending a text.

It was the Aerial Awards in London on Tuesday, run by the RAB (with a mission to ‘encourage radio advertising to be proud of’ - their words, not ours) and hosted by geek chic Simon Amstell. (At this point I should admit that despite being a fan of Never Mind the Buzzcocks, I’d got it into my head that Simon Amstell was that chap off Hi De Hi. I had no clue why they’d asked him.)

Simon Amstell…

…and Simon Cadell. Easily confused.

Amstell’s opening words were “Before we start I’d just like to say that I really, really, really love radio advertising.” Everyone laughed. Not hard belly laughs, more nervous titters. Radio’s an easy target.

Anyway, our MSIM script was nominated in the Leisure and Services category, alongside a spot for Autotrader and one for Monster.co.uk. Autotrader won. Fair dos, it was a good script, and we felt kind of proud to have made it through to the final three – in fact, we were the only non-London agency to be nominated. (That old chestnut again*…) We’ll just have to try harder for next year. You can hear all the commercials here.

One of the problems I noticed with the awards was how difficult it is to get people to listen to 2-3 minutes of radio every time a category came up. Even our normallly unflappable host started to get a bit twitchy about the noise. It’s just impossible to do, so it wasn’t until the next day that I got to listen properly to the ads on the CD that came with a goody bag. Also tucked in was £15 worth of iTunes vouchers. Which was nice.

The rest of the night was a bit of a blur, and the general excitement proved all too much for some, so Phil was safely tucked up in bed by 1030. His excuse in the morning was that “it’s drinking lager – it just does that to me.” No Phil, it does that to everyone…

Note 1 - Big thank you to all involved in organising the event.

Note 3 - having just looked up Simon Cadell on wikipedia, I notice that he died in 1996. With all due respect, this is probably why they asked Simon Amstell.

Thursday was the first Manchester gig for the Northern Planning Summit, which I trust was enjoyed by all. Venue was trof, stylishly spelt with a lower case ‘t’, which is a new bar, and a little up itself. It’s also a tad tricky to get a seat, and near impossible to find seating for ten or twelve, but I think by the end of the night we’d taken over a good corner of the ground floor. Will try harder to find a suitable venue for next visit, whenever that may be.

Usual faces turned up, plus some shiney new ones from Feather Brooksbank. No badges were given out, but I think the Yorkshire Tea goody-bags were appreciated. Sorry to anyone that didn’t get one. Hopefully this has cleared my debt from previous bill-dodging affair in Leeds.

The night reminded me that there really should be a general meet up open to all agencies – one that doesn’t necessarily hinge on planning (not that NPS does – it’s just the name that leans that way) More people, more faces, more talent, more agencies, more ideas, more fun. The only time we tend to get together and meet the other people in our industry is at awards ceremonies, and everyone tends to act like a bit of a knob at those things, myself included. (Note to anyone I might meet at awards dos in the future: I do not think you’re a knob)

I’m not by any means suggesting to organise an Interestingness conference for the north – I wouldn’t’ even try – more that in the two NPSs I’ve been to, it’s occurred to me that there are some very clever people out there, and amazingly enough they don’t all work in my office. I’d like to meet a few more.

Why Man Creates
Oscar winning film directed by Saul Bass. Available from pyramidmedia.com. Genius.