Trading Gossip

Jun 25 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

TRADING Gossip previously stated that Dougal Paver, head of Liverpool’s biggest PR firm Paver Smith, was ending his blogging days.

His regular “Dougal” blog featured a mixture of right-wing rants against Gordon Brown, tree huggers, Guardian readers and Norwegian Liverpool fans.

All Dougal would say about his blog’s demise was “forces are at play”.

But Trading Gossip can reveal that among those unhappy with the tone of the blog was Paver Smith chairman, Jim Davies, a senior partner at local corporate law firm, DWF.

Dougal was seemingly too candid about the net-working of other members of the business community for Sunny Jim’s liking.

We mourn this victory for the forces of conservatism and urge Dougal to break free of the shackles – or find another chairman.

SWASHBUCKLING hero of the week is Mike Newton, chief executive of Warrington-based CCTV specialists AD Group.

The fearless executive was competing in the famous Le Mans 24 Hours motor race when he apparently came close to meeting his maker.

He had been driving the powerful RML MG Lola EX264 race car for nearly an hour when it suddenly took flight and left the track at 270kph, while negotiating the infamous Porsche curves.

Fortunately, Mike kept a cool head and the car mirac-ulously landed on its wheels and he was able to emerge unscathed. What a guy.

THE huge Liverpool One shopping devel-opment has won many plaudits since its May launch, but not everyone one is impressed.

At the Design Show Liv- erpool Awards at the Con- temporary Urban Centre last week, famous designer Wayne Hemingway, above, said the scheme was an example of “clone town Britain” and that it could be “absolutely anywhere”.

He said he would love to see some of the designs from the show on sale at the development. He told the crowd of young designers: “Imagine if you got this stuff in front of all those damn, daft WAGS and they bought it instead of hot-pants and stuff that shows off their boobies.”