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John Sweeney reports on a new series of allegations against one of Britain’s best-known PR men
PR guru Paul Blanchard is quite clear about the trouble he is in: “I am the victim of a plot” – to destroy him and his reputation management business. Or so he claims.
The 45-year-old already has quite a reputation in the world of public relations – by my definition, a trade where people with money pay clever people to say nice things about them or make sure no one says anything nasty about them.
Describing himself as a “media consigliere for global leaders”, Blanchard – who has written for Forbes and CityAm – started life as an entrepreneur at the age of 17 by setting up his own computer business. Over the years, he has built up a PR and media business for high-value clients, written a book Fast PR, and created a podcast series in which he interviews the great and the good of journalism.
By happy accident, I met him five years ago for his Media Masters podcast after which he wined and dined me at The Ivy. I had enjoyed the podcast, lunch and had liked Paul.
I wasn’t alone in this. He’s interviewed 250 or so media personalities including Times columnist David Aaronovitch; Stig Abell of Times Radio; Jamie Angus, boss of BBC World; Adam Boulton of Sky News; Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News; James Harding, editor of Tortoise Media; Julia Hartley-Brewer, presenter at Talk Radio; John Humphrys, ex-Today programme presenter; Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator; Alan Rusbridger, former Guardian editor; Sarah Sands, BBC Today programme editor; the BBC’s former Director General Mark Thompson, now boss at the New York Times; BBC Radio Two’s Jeremy Vine; Byline Times’ executive editor Peter Jukes; and, last but not least, Jeffrey Archer.
All of this boils down to one ultimate truth: don’t do bad things.
Paul Blanchard
As a PR guru, Blanchard has written often about crisis management and burying bad news. He says he has been involved in “dozens of legal reputational disputes” and compares tools of lawyers — NDAs [non-disclosure agreements], super-injunctions and legal threats — with the equally “impressive set of tools” in the PR arsenal. “The psychology of both sides is fascinating,” he wrote in Worth: “What do you threaten and when? How far do you go?… All of this boils down to one ultimate truth: don’t do bad things.”
Can it be that the PR guru has been hoist by his own petard?
Obsessed
One of his former employees, 24-year-old Madelaine Hanson, who worked for Blanchard for 14 months, says he owes her £29,350. Blanchard told The Times that Hanson stole a client and that is why the money was not paid. He says he is going to launch legal proceedings against her but she says she has done nothing wrong.
Another woman, Allie Dickinson, who also worked for Blanchard’s PR company, Right Angles, claims that he owes her £13,631 from April this year. Byline Times has seen emails to her from Blanchard. In one of them he says: “You have revealed yourself to be a terrible, nasty, vindictive person… I can cheer myself up in spending the money I had earmarked for you on something nice for myself.” Since those emails were sent, Blanchard told The Times he has agreed to use a mediation service to pay the money “she thinks she is owed” but Dickinson says she has received nothing to that effect.
Blanchard has said “it’s very annoying to have a couple of people obsessed with bringing us down”. But Byline Times has discovered that these two women are far from alone in claiming they have not been paid and that legal threats in response appear to be a stock in trade.
Helen Croydon was hired in 2018 as ‘director of delivery’– the most senior figure below Blanchard. She said: “It became clear very quickly that employees were scared of Paul and there was no business strategy or management procedure… In my third week he sacked someone via the public ‘Slack’ channel and then didn’t pay her (I know because I was CCd on her employment lawyer’s emails).”
I am genuinely going to the police at 10 am tomorrow. They will have to interview you under caution.
Paul Blanchard
“When I finally left in March 2019, on moral grounds, he became paranoid I would steal his clients and told them that he was ‘going legal’ on me,” Croydon told Byline Times. “It was a horrible and very stressful period in which I had to seek legal advice.”
Croydon says that, during their dispute, Blanchard sent her abusive messages, calling her a “lying bitch” and “a thief” for stealing clients and company property. He messaged her: “I am genuinely going to the police at 10 am tomorrow. They will have to interview you under caution.” Blanchard’s former director of delivery told Byline Times she won a small claims court against him for £2,000 for non-payment of earnings “but despite the court ruling, he still has not paid this”.
A lover of the good life, Blanchard posts photos of himself tending his Ford Mustang and Tesla outside his fancy home in Buckinghamshire – galling to so many ex-employees and contract workers because they claim he owes them money.
David Franks, who worked for him for three months in 2012, said: “He’s driving around in a Tesla but he owes all these people a lot of money, me included. He’s a fraudster.”
Suki Falchi says she is owed £5,000 from February this year and Holly Haines £5,000, Jimmy Leach £5,000 and Scott Taylor £4,000, all, they say, owed from 2019.
Auguste Grecuite – who claims Blanchard owes her £3,500 from March this year – told Byline Times: “I’m really sorry that Madelaine is experiencing so much pressure from him, it’s really unfair given that she’s clearly the victim.”
Blanchard denies owing money to former employees and contract workers. He disputes the allegation that there is a pattern of non-payment. He says some of these people have been offered access to a tribunal in order to settle disputed claims and that there are multiple business reasons why the two parties may differ over the alleged amounts owed.
Toxic Workplace
Not surprisingly, perhaps, many people who have worked for Paul Blanchard would only talk to me on condition of anonymity but many suggested that the threat of legal action is “classic Blanchard”. Other former employees have come forward with accusations which put the charming interviewer and gracious host in a different light.
Office banter can go badly wrong and I, for one, have offended good people without meaning to. But Blanchard’s ‘humour’ to his team is on a different level.
Seven people who used to work for Blanchard, and others who wish to remain anonymous, allege the following language by him: “Christ-killer”; “Jesus killer”; “They killed Jesus”; and just before an interview with Sky News, he messaged the team that he was going on “Sky Jews”.
On Blanchard’s business communication platform, Slack, he repeatedly used the phrase “quadra-spazz”, knowing that his former editor-in-chief Allie Dickinson’s son has cerebral palsy.
He sent the team an image of a Lego Stephen Hawking, saying tha