±±¾©Èü³µpk10

Employees lift the lid on Desmond’s office ‘quirks’

Five staffers are "interested" to see what kind of boss the channel’s new owner Richard Desmond will prove to be - after all, this is the man who reportedly only allows visitors to leave his office when he presses a button under his desk.

So Bitch thought she would recount a few anecdotes from Desmond’s former employees, starting with the tale of the glass-ceiling-busting female executive who came over to head OK! magazine.

When the "big player in the industry" sat down at her first board meeting with Desmond - full of big, bright ideas for the mag - his joint managing director Stan Myerson introduced the lady with a description of her impressive achievements.

Desmond’s answer in front of the entire Northern & Shell board? "Alright love, make us a cup of tea and we’ll talk about it." So much for the suffragettes!

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

On another occasion, Stan Myerson, joint managing director Martin Ellice and Desmond were walking through the Northern & Shell HQ with a Norwegian businessman, when they bumped into an employee renowned for his enthusiasm for keeping fit and immediately challenged him to a "press-off".

But Desmond doing press-ups in the corridor is tame compared to his spell of not talking in board meetings - instead, he had the ingenious idea of using a Horn or a Duck quacker to show the thumbs up or down for editorial ideas.

At the time, OMD was the media agency for Northern & Shell, and when they went in to present their advertising strategy for the business - after a lot of thought, effort and late nights - Bitch hears the ‘conversation’ went a bit like this:

"Quack" (after the first slide), "Quack" (after the second carefully researched market insight) and (as the team headed for the door): "Quaaaaaaaaack!"

Elle fashionistas set the style for office drama

So let’s hope Desmond sounds the hooter for Five’s newly commissioned show Push, which follows twenty-something Lydia Harrison as she lands her dream job as a fashion reporter on Elle magazine.

The show is a reality/drama hybrid in the style of The Hills, so camera crews are filming in Elle’s offices from next week to capture Lydia interacting with real-life staffers, and even doing some "proper work".

Bitch also hears producers Serena Cullen and Robert Elliott have been consulting Elle on what Lydia should wear for work - and digital director Anna Jones has decreed the character’s clothes should "evolve" as she finds her fashion feet. "Lydia will go from overstyled to fashion-savvy," Jones revealed.

Hold the front page for Standard’s in-house Olympian

Clear Channel’s James Elson may have completed , but no less impressive are the efforts of the Evening Standard’s ad director Jon O’Donnell, who completed his first triathlon in Hyde Park on 24 July.

O’Donnell has been replacing rum and cokes with 80k bike rides and swims in freezing lakes since January - so he finished a respectable 98 out of 500 in his age group (35 to 40) and now has grand plans for an Evening Standard Triathlon Team, roping in colleagues James White and Oliver Wheatley.

But his ambitions don’t stop there: since the Standard will be "the number one paper for the Olympics", says O’Donnell, it is only fair he should be part of the Olympic triathlon squad.

"I would be very surprised if I wasn’t," O’Donnell told Bitch, adding that a gold medal and full editorial coverage are in the bag. Hold the front page…

Initiative lowers the bar at rooftop barbeque

Despite predictions of rain, the sun broke through the clouds just in time for Initiative’s Summer Barbeque on the rooftop of 26 Smithfield, where the team from Metro, who laid on the drinks for the party, ensured "everyone had a drink in their hand".

Chief executive Gary Birtles took a break from his usual uniform of a white shirt and dark trousers to wear "possibly the brightest Hawaiian shirt ever made", and his relaxed mood set the tone for a sunset limbo competition, led by press group head Sarah Tsirkas.

The bar descended lower and lower, taking down many worthy challengers - including head of planning and insight Tony Regan (pictured) - although the mayhem had to be replaced by "shape-throwing" and "powersliding" when press group head Dave Barnett snapped the limbo bar in "spectacular" fashion.

'Don't let them eat cake,' says NatMags

And finally: what do you get when senior publishing executives toast a glossy wedding mag’s 25th anniversary with free-flowing rose, with boyband Blake (below) singing Snow Patrol hits in falsetto thrown in for good measure?

An ‘emotional’ crowd swaying to "Love lifts us up where we belong" by 10pm, that’s what - as Bitch witnessed at NatMags’ party for You and Your Wedding’s silver anniversary at Aqua on Carnaby Street, where NatMags’ Miranda Eason, Peta Hunt and Matt Salmon held court on the rooftop terrace.

In short, the wedding-style celebrations went with a bang: the only downer was that the wedding cake - so beautifully adorned with edible You & Your Wedding covers - proved, on further inspection, to encase a polystyrene mock-up. Time for a joke about how NatMags can have their cake but can’t eat it. Or something.