I read today that Marco Pierre White is now brand ambassador for Bernard Matthews to help promote the health benefits of turkey.

I couldn’t help but think what a sell-out MPW has become. Of course, he’s achieved pretty much everything there is to achieve in terms of culinary accolades so why not cash in? But surely, he still has restaurants and this kind of endorsement can’t be good for brand Marco.

I’m a subscriber to Time Out magazine and I’ve just received an email from them with a link to a digital version of this week’s magazine. It’s a free service and they have very kindly created this format for me so that I don’t miss out on any upcoming events because of the postal strike. And, I’m reliably informed, they will continue to produce a digital version until Royal Mail industrial action ends.

How cool is that? I’m really impressed. Not only because here’s a brand that is being proactive and thinking of its loyal subscribers but also because I actually love the format!

As a bit of a ‘green’ I’d actually be really up for receiving my mag in this way EVERY week, strike or no strike. I also find the growing pile of Time Outs on my living room table is getting a bit out of hand… but I don’t want to throw them out in case I need to reference one of them at some point in the future! In this new digital format, perhaps they could be stored in the Cloud for me to access at any time? There’s something so much nicer about the magazine layout and design than having to navigate the web page.

Nice one Time Out.

Ryanair has announced plans to make passengers carry their own luggage on to its planes. This is on top of the move to charge for using onboard toilets and banishing airport check-ins from October 2009.

Surely this is another ridiculous story to get maximum PR coverage? It’s fairly obvious that Michael O’Leary subscribes to the ‘any news is good news’ school of thinking. But what if this is for real? At what point does ‘cheap and cheerful’ become ‘cheap and nasty’?

Last night’s episode of The Apprentice was one of the most cringe-worthy yet. The task involved each team creating a new children’s cereal brand from scratch. They had to devise the name, the packaging including a character and a TV ad in the space of 48 hours. (CPB helped with last year’s task to create a tissue brand and it really is an overnight job.)