£10,000 a day?
How much did the Department of Health pay the likes of Melinda Messenger for publicity? We shall never know. They used our money but the Freedom of Information Act does not allow us to find out.
Do you know who Melinda Messenger is? If you are an old fart like Dr Grumble you may never have heard of her. If you do a google image search (make sure you are not at work) and take off the 'safe search' you can see what she has to offer. They used her in the 5 A DAY campaign apparently. Not that old Grumble saw anything of the campaign. Nor did the Grumble children. What is the justification for 5 a day anyway? Is there any? Melinda Messenger's five times a day sounds too much. Too much for Dr Grumble anyway. But was she paid too much? We shall never know.
Do people trust celebrities, people who are famous for being famous, more than doctors? According to Dr Grumble's favourite parliamentary doctor, that's something else we don't know.
And what does Dr Grumble think of Melinda's performance? She was actually quite good. Certainly up to the Grumble standard. As for the video as a whole, it was easily up to the usual Department of Health standard.
8 comments:
I'm not going to engage with your learned discourse while you've got those shitty little ads all over your modest turds of wisdom.
Not as bad as His Holiness Dr John Crippen, but still pretty bad.
You, umm, cosy with the Pharmaceutical Reps too?
Would you rise up and do the decent thing for an old lady, for a pack of post-it notes?
Oh, go on dear, I'll take me teeth out for you and throw in a biro.
xXx
Unfortunately Dr G is heavily dependent on the ads to maintain a lifestyle on a par with that of Melinda Messenger.
It has now been revealed that each celebrity has been paid an average of £13000.
Clinical experts were also paid. Wouldn't you think the Department of Health would have access to clinical experts for free? How odd.
Maybe the celebrities wanted to be paid for the same reasons that the Clinical experts expected to be paid? Had you thought of that?
..why of earth would you want to emulate Melinda Messinger?! The mind boggles.....
What clinical expert?
By the way Dr G has given his services free to initiatives like this.
The Clinical Experts you mention in your comment of 11.1.09...
Clearly these individuals are not as philanthropic as you. Shame on your fellow clinicians.
And celebrites.
The clinical experts mentioned on 11.1.09 should have read "clinical experts".
Dr G rather felt that the clinical expert they had engaged was more a celebrity than an expert. Her agent's defence was that she was being paid for clinical expertise but that was no defence because most real clinical experts would not have charged. The whole of the NHS should have had an expert in this area who would have been equally or more knowledgeable and would have been honoured to help with this in their own time or their Trust might have released them to do this work.
There were ways to do this cheaper and better.
Accroding to one account:
Professor Byron’s agent, Samantha Richards, said: ‘There’s a very clear demarcation between the role Tanya has as a professional clinical expert and other celebrities who are paid to deliver a PR message. The distinction is that Tanya isn’t a celebrity.’
According to wikepedia Tanya Byron (born 1967) is a British Clinical Psychologist who rose to fame since 2004...... She has an agent and has risen to fame. That is more celebrity than clinical expert.
Dr G did not put in the right links for his comment to make the sense he intended. Apologies.
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