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Hollywood? Who needs it!

WHAT do you think would be more appealing... sitting alone in a room tapping away endlessly at a keyboard that always just seems to avoid saying what you intend it to say...
Or walking the red carpets of Hollywood, feted by the media and worshipped by fans for your wit, good looks and star quality?
It might seem a no-brainer, especially to those of us who beat out our daily bread from the keys of computers.
But for one weel-kent face of screen and stage, who straddles this divide between thinking and doing, the answer comes as something of a surprise.
John Gordon Sinclair, star of movies from World War Z to Gregory's Girl is bashing out a new career through the words on the printed page as a crime writer with a growing following and now working on his third book. Asked by one of those at a recent meeting managed by the Words Agency whether he preferred writing or acting, Sinclair replied without a second's hesitation that it was writing.
"I far prefer it. I like to be able to tell the story and decide where it starts and where it's going.
"I suppose it's really about control. I don't have to be told, 'No you can't have a horses coming over the hill in this scene.' It's up to me. I can have a thousand if I want. I don't have to listen to the demands of a budget or the decisions of a producer or director. I can do what I want."
Words...and the creativity they unleash. He's right, that can't be beaten by anything.

Whisky with a splash...

HOW do you get a business message out from a small island on the edge of the Atlantic to investors, enthusiasts and public sector agencies in Britain and around the world?
That was the problem facing distillery start-up company Isle of Harris Distillers who were setting up one of the most ambitious and exciting new whisky projects seen in Scotland in recent years.
They came to The Words Agency, and the rest, as they say is history.
The Words Agency was able to identify key media outlets to capture the audiences in Scotland, Britain, the US and the Far East to build interest and excitement in what is to be a completely new whisky region of Scotland.
Moreover, we were able to generate interest and coverage not only on the back of this "first", but also by underlining the individuality of the company's concept of creating a "Social Distillery" that would benefit its local community economically and socially in a way that is highly unusual for a commercial business.
A number of well-placed articles helped with the fundraising drive in public and private sectors that raised £10m and the new distillery was officially launched earlier this year to a supportive reception among media outlets in Scotland, London, and the US.
Construction of the distillery has begun and it is even possible to buy your first dram of "The Hearach" as the Isle of Harris Distillers single malt is called, by ordering up a cask.
The only problem is, you will have to wait for eight years until it has matured into the unique and very high quality product the company aims to produce. But what a delightful prospect to look forward to!
For more information on this remarkable company visit www.harrisdistillery.com

Look, listen . . . and earn

OBSERVATION... it’s such a simple word, but the creativity and benefits that flow from its good use can be prodigious.

The Words Agency has been working recently with Skene House Hotels, part of the Skene Group, one of Scotland’s best known family-run businesses with activities in widely different areas from property to continuing care.

One of their hotels, the Skene House Whitehall in Aberdeen, has just celebrated the remarkable achievement of spending two years continuously at the top of TripAdvisor and rightly proud of this feat were looking for help in getting publicity in the national and trade media.

The Skene House properties are apart-hotels, the developing concept of serviced suites rather than rooms which is changing the whole nature of the hotels market. The founder of the company, serial entrepreneur and fascinating raconteur Charles P Skene, pictured right, was possibly the first person to bring the apart-hotel concept to Scotland and the UK way back in the early 1980’s and, as with many of the best ideas, it was born from
simple observation.

He explained: “It was at a time when the oil industry was taking off in Aberdeen and there was a severe shortage of accommodation for oilmen and their families coming to the city.
I realised while I was walking down the corridor of a city hotel one day, how much of a problem it was for a family staying in a hotel. I watched the children of one family come out of their room and traipse down the corridor to their parents’ room and I thought what a pain that must be for them all, preventing them being together and it was from that I got the idea of having suites where a whole family could stay together.”

After seeing the concept in action during a visit to the USA, Charles came back even more convinced that it was a winner. The company already had residential properties in Aberdeen, began converting these into hotel suites, and a good idea had become a good business which has now being prospering for 30 years and has made that top spot on the internet review website – among the 66 hotels in the city and surrounding area – its own.

All from staying observant and thinking creatively on the back of what is observed. We need to keep our eyes peeled... you never know where it might lead.

The Tsar who came to Scotland

WHAT could possibly connect the Russian despot Tsar Nicholas I, Holyrood’s very own Fiona Hyslop, Rabbie Burns, Napoleon, stolen kisses in a Borders wood and the mediaeval Scottish wordsmith Thomas The Rhymer?

The answer is the Borders town of Moffat and its fascinating history of words, books and legends.

The Words Agency was recently asked to help with PR for an upcoming international books event being held in Moffat and when we started digging we found the town has a remarkable series of Russian connections.

Moffat Book Events is a locally-based charity which promotes the arts, heritage, culture and science of and for Moffat and surrounding areas by staging creative events. It has organised an international literary conference being held in the town from September 20-22 in partnership with the All Russian State Library for Foreign Literature which was attracted to the town because of its historical ties. See www.moffatbookevents.co.uk for details.

It turns out that Tsar Nicholas visited Moffat as a young man of 20 in 1816 when he was still a mere Grand Duke, accompanied by the general who defeated Napoleon at Borodino outside Moscow, Field Marshal Kutusov. The Tsar-to-be stayed at the local King’s Arms Hotel, now the Annandale Arms, and liked it so much he declared it the best hotel he had visited in Britain.

The pair were visiting Britain to join the celebrations over the final defeat of Boney, but Nicholas also relished his stay in Moffat because of its Burns connection. The Tsar loved Burns’s poetry and the Bard was a regular visitor in the area in his role as an Exciseman.

His visits were probably even more regular than strictly necessary because, inevitably, he took a shine to a local beauty and met her for assignations. He even wrote a famous poem, Craigieburn Woods, about his love, and the Tsar became so enamoured of it that he is reputed to have departed the town with a pane of glass from the local Black Bull Inn which had a saucy couplet engraved on it. The locals later got their own back when at the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853 they burned an effigy of Nick in the streets.

And if the Burnsian poetical connection were not enough, it turns out that there is also a link to another of Tsar Nick’s most loved poets, that giant of Russian words, Mikhail Lermontov.

The Romantic poet – so romantic that he died in a duel at the age of 25 which arose because of his joke about a fellow officer – was in fact descended from good Borders stock.

His ancestor George Leirmont was an officer in the Polish army in the 17th century and his descendants ended up in Russia. Leirmont was himself a member of the ancient Learmonth family from the Borders village of that name, east of Moffat, and one of the clan was the self-same 13th century poet Thomas The Rhymer.

Moffat Book Events are already preparing to celebrate the Lermontov connection on the 200th anniversary of his birth next year with a link-up to Edinburgh Woollen Mill who are preparing a special range of goods in Learmonth tartan for sale in Russia, and in the commissioning of six Scots poets to take inspiration in their work from six of Mikhail’s works.

With all these threads running back to Russia, it is not surprising that the Kremlin’s Deputy Culture Minister Grigory Ivliev is going to be dropping in on the Moffat event, and will be joined by the Scottish Culture Minister herself... Fiona Hyslop.

What a rich tapestry of historical and literary chance.