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**Long-suffering music business HMV has finally toppled into administration as suppliers have refused more credit. It’s all about downloads of course, there aren’t enough old farts (like me) hunting around for CDs.
The move follows hard on the heels of the Virgin music business in France going down the tubes (Sir Richard got out years go). There’ll be a lot more UK retailers pounced on by their creditors while the Christmas money is still in the tills.
**Former Sunday Express editor Sue Douglas (left) still seems determined to buy herself a British newspaper. God knows why. Her latest wheeze is to pay £10m for Trinity Mirror’s Sunday tab the People; whose continued existence is a bit of a mystery. It sells about 400,000 copies.
TM may be open to a deal, its boss is now Simon Fox who used to run HMV – see above. But how on earth can you make money from a standalone Sunday newspaper these days? Sue’s last consortium, to buy Richard Desmond’s Daily Star Sunday, included former HHCL, McCann and ITV boss Rupert Howell. Don’t do it Rupe!
**Easyjet is going great guns these days under former Guardian boss Carolyn McCall but its advertising, through VCCP which was appointed last year in rather controversial circumstances, keeps missing the target.
This latest ad for flights to Malaga knocking dear old Margate in the UK has been withdrawn after supporters of the rather down-at-heel Kent resort objected volubly.
Margate is a bit of a dump but it does have a new Turner museum (Turner painted some of his great works in Margate while he was shacked up with a seaside landlady) which is great and also the Ambrette, the finest Indian restaurant in the whole of the UK.
You can see what Easyjet’s strategy is: lure people away from package holidays by showing how easy it is to do it yourself. But a bit of class doesn’t go amiss, even if you’re aiming down market.
