Today it was Richard Duerr’s turn to head over to the BBC and chat through the stories of the day with Heather Stott.

Once again it’s a 45 minute clip but there are songs in between…

This week Democracy PR founder Jennifer O’Grady popped into the BBC Radio Manchester studio to chat with presenter Heather Stott about the latest news over coffee.

Other guests for the 9am – 10am daily slot included Tom Cropper from organic retailer The Farm Shed and Sharon Peake award winning hairdresser from Ethos Hairdressing.

We chatted about everything from men who like curvy women to making the most of kitchen leftovers. If you want to listen to the show, click onto our blog.

The best news is that our client Richard Duerr of Duerr’s will be on the show tomorrow. Should be an interesting show . . . .

This morning, Democracy PR founder Jennifer O’Grady popped into the BBC Radio Manchester studio to chat with presenter Heather Stott about the latest news over coffee.

It’s a 45 minute clip but there is music…

New stats which appeared on Mashable yesterday show that Twitter has reached 500 million tweets a day, or 600 tweets a second.

There’s no indication as to whether this is due to more members or just more active members but it does show that twitter is continuing to grow at quite a pace.

The other big Twitter news is that His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who has had an account for some time, has become active, enabling Twitter to cater for the spiritual needs of the 500 million daily tweets.

Well, my first blog at Democracy PR on my new computer at my new desk, how exciting!

I caught the `PR bug` when working at Pleasure Beach, Blackpool in their PR department. Forgive the pun, but yes, it was a rollercoaster of a place to begin your career. The constant excitement and flow of ideas in the office left me wanting to learn and develop more, so when i saw the opportunity at Democracy i knew that it would be a fantastic opportunity to push myself to progress quickly.

I wasn’t always in PR though . . . in fact, I’ve spent many years travelling as a professional dancer for high profile companies including The Moulin Rouge. But my heart stayed in Manchester and I wanted to come back home.

Although it has only been my first day, the atmosphere already has me looking forward to work tomorrow. Where else can you discuss Gordon Brown in one sentence and the positive benefits of honey in the next?

What’s for sure is that this latest twist on my personal PR rollercoaster looks like it’s going to be a thrilling one.

Today sees the launch of the new online TV streaming service SeeSaw. The concept is that, in a similar way to Google it doesn’t create content, just aggregate it.

So there’s nothing on it that you couldn’t watch on the sites of the channels it streams, at the minute the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5, yet it’s all in the same place. The immediately useful feature is that you can select your content by channel, or by genre; so if you’re in the mood for something factual SeeSaw will offer you programmes originally broadcast on all channels.

It’s also visually very simple and easy to use, closer to BBC iPlayer than Demand 5 in design, and it seems to be using the same strategy as 4OD to get us to re-live great series like Teachers and Queer as Folk.

It’s free to view at the minute and funded by advertising, but according to its controller is planning to charge for some content, like US dramas, as it grows.

I can definitely see the possible uses of the service and am impressed with the design and ease of use, I guess it just remains to be seen, as usual with online services, whether it can attract loyal users and advertisers and make enough money to stick around.

How pleased are we? Scruffs – the cheeky brand of workwear – has decided that they want Democracy to launch their new MAN TIPS campaign due to launch in Feb. MAN TIPS is a cheeky national campaign developed in conjunction with our friends at Manchester advertising agency CBJWT and features been-there-and-done-that Uncle ‘Arry as the ultimate brand advocate.

We adore uncle ‘Arry – he’s always on hand with wise words to help the nation’s tradesmen get out of the sticky situations they face when the opposite sex becomes overwhelmed by seeing them in their Scruffs work gear.

We’ll be working in partnership with the Scruffs in-house marketing team, led by the wickedly creative Chris Mellor-Dolman and CBJWT to exploit the social media opportunities across Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as we engage tradesmen with the MAN TIPS concept through traditional and online channels.

It was a competitive pitch, so we were chuffed when Chris from Scruffs told us the news, but even happier when he told us why:  “MAN TIPS is a great creative, and Democracy PR understood that what we needed was a campaign to support that, not another campaign all by itself. Their social media strategy will be at the heart of everything we do and the tactics they have developed will help deliver on our ambitious sales targets.”

On return to the office (they’re based in Nottingham) even Uncle ‘Arry had something to say: “What can I tell you? Those birds at Democracy know that my words of wisdom could mean a lucky escape for one of my boys next time Big Mrs O’Reilly wants more than ‘er drive layin’.”

What we love about Scruffs is that they aren’t afraid of what social media can do for their brand – in fact, they can’t wait to start talking with their online community. Their cheeky approach to marketing is reflected in the ideas we pitched – we know it’s going to get dirty and that’s just the way we like it!

It’s my birthday!

Not my actual birthday you understand . . .  but my Democracy birthday. Twelve months on I’ve picked out some of the best bits, not an easy task but I’ve had a go.

Favourite consumer campaign

It had to be Manchester Marmalade. Getting to know the guys at Duerr’s has been a pleasure and this product was massive fun to PR and got a great reaction from journalists and media alike. It fitted the Duerr’s brand so well as an authentic Manchester product made by a generations-old Manchester company. It was also unusual in that I got some direct feedback on the coverage; when supervising in store sampling it was common to hear ‘Yes, I saw that on the telly/heard it on the radio’ and sales at Tesco are fantastic as the people of Manchester stock up their breakfast table with a jar of the orange stuff.

Favourite PR project

No prizes for guessing this one; planning and executing a weekend for 20 people to Lynchburg Tennessee for our client Jack Daniel’s Barbecue Sauces. As well as having a great weekend myself being treated like a VIP in a town I’d probably never otherwise have made it to, it was immensley satisfying to know that the 18 others were having just as good a time. Seeing the group just expect buses, hotels and meals to turn up on schedule was nerve racking but pulling off a great weekend made for a very happy Apprentice on the plane on the way home.

Favourite press coverage

Two pieces here for the same client; BabyDeli. Back in February when we started working with Louise at BabyDeli it was so clear that she had a great product and a great business she just needed to tell people, specifically mums, about it. In July, as part of a wider series of media visits and introductions that also secured coverage across the parenting media, The Telegraph picked out BabyDeli on their ‘Food News’ page. I can remember very clearly walking down the street carrying a holdall full of frozen samples and juggling a ringing phone with The Telegraph picture desk after a packaging shot. The second piece followed this in The Times as part of a review of premium baby foods, to see the products included there indicated the extent to which we’d been successful in raising the profile of the brand.

To finish off an action packed year, I had my annual review on Friday, and I’ve been promoted to the role of Client Advocate! Can’t wait to see what next year brings …

The lovely Sarah Hartley, who sadly for us is not based in Manchester any more, has instead been beavering away at Guardian HQ training up three so called ‘beatbloggers’ to usher in the future of local journalism.

Yesterday Sarah announced that they will be hitting their beats in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Leeds as of next week with blogs to be launched in the first half of this year.

This is a really interesting project which the wider journalism community is watching with bated breath. Sarah describes them as ‘talented journalists’ so I for one can’t wait to read their hyper -local blogs.

On the subject of local journalism, I was chatting to the director of a local charity this week who was concerned that the local media didn’t seem interested in the great hands on work they do in the community with groups who generally don’t get a lot of good press.

Maybe hiring talented local bloggers is one way busy news organisations can penetrate deaper into the community they serve without adding massive overheads.

I really hope the bloggers can get onto their beats and into the lives of their readers and wish Sarah and her team lots of luck.

It would seem rather against the grain to talk about anything that isn’t the iPad today, even though I’ve spent most of my day talking about anything but. (That’s jam sandwiches, pelvic toners, entrepreneurs, baby food menus, hall tests and grapefruit if you were wondering)

Anyway onto the iPad, after reading the announcement via twitter during ‘The Derby’ last night and reading the opinions of tech journalists in the papers this morning I’ve just managed to watch the video on Apple’s site and I have to say, that, just like everyone else, I think it looks like a big iPhone.

I am convinced that, like all Apple products, you won’t realise you need one until you get one (or all your friends do first) and I really like the name; it’s like an iPod, it’s like a pad, geddit? Best use of the name so far in a blog from Stephen Fry today entitled “iPad About”.

So if we’re all reserving judgement on the product, which seems to be the general consensus, the thing we can marvel at instead is Apple’s PR skills. When was the last time someone launched a laptop and the world’s media gave it this amount of attention?

By keeping everything about their product a secret Apple created the ultimate crescendo of excitement around the launch event. Rather than leaking specs or samples to favoured journalists or bloggers, Apple kept the tech community holding their breath and they passed their excitement on to their readers, friends and followers.

If only Apple didn’t seem to enjoy making such beautiful adverts they wouldn’t need to advertise at all.