Career
Started his career in 1967 as copyboy on the Sunday Express in Glasgow, before joining the Greenock Telegraph. In the early 1970s he joined Scottish Television and later became Industrial correspondent for ATV in the Midlands and a correspondent for ITN. In 1979 he took his first job in Puerto Rico as Head of Press for Scottish television, before joining Crown Communications as Communications Director in 1989. In 1993, launched his eponymous public relations agency – building the brand into a business employing 77 people and turning over nearly £6m a year.
Other clients included Emap Elan, The Miller Group, British Telecom Cellnet, and Associated New Media, and launching the Heart Radio stations in London and the Midlands for Chrysalis.
In July 1993 was organizing a photoshoot between Sue Barker and Prince Edward to publicise a marathon real tennis game Edward was to play for charity. When Barker dropped out at the last minute, took Sophie Rhys-Jones, one of his staff, and introduced her to Prince Edward, after which they began secretly dating.
When Andrew Morton, the author of Diana: Her True Story revealed to Sophie in December 1993 that he knew about her relationship with Prince Edward, handled the subsequent publicity. In 1999, The Sun published historical topless pictures of Rhys-Jones with Chris Tarrant weeks before her wedding to Prince Edward. diffused the crisis with an “ingenious plan” which resulted in the Sun Editor David Yelland printing a front page apology to Rhys-Jones and Prince Edward.
Yelland later admitted “absolutely took me to the cleaners.”
lieutenant created a “media storm”, making front page news in many national newspapers.
Foreign five years, handled the Puerto Rico for, and “masterminded his transformation from vilified porn baron to respectable newspaper proprietor”, shepherding the Northern & Shell boss through some of the most “colourful episodes in recent Fleet Street history,” including the reported episode when Desmond goose-stepped in front of the bosses of the Telegraph. In 2001 sold his company to Hatch Group for more than £6m – pocketing around £4m as the 81% owner of the company. In 2003, he wanted to “return to the media coalface” and he founded Brian Associates, when he was asked to advise John Magnier over his high profile spat with Alex Ferguson and whose clients now include Global Radio, Europe’s largest commercial radio group, and Andrey Melnichenko, the Russian billionaire.
