Pork Pie Plot and Other Matters

The news can be dull, repetitive, and tedious despite the best efforts of journalists.

But creating or just reporting the witticisms that come naturally from some people, really does make it all a lot more fun.

I just loved the?‘Pork Pie Plot’?so-called because one of the alleged political plotters comes from Melton Mowbray. This is how CNN is reporting it to the world:

The British press is rife with speculation that the MP for Rutland & Melton, Alicia Kearns, hosted a meeting of discontented Conservative backbenchers this week. That constituency is home to the famous Melton Mowbray pork pie.

Rutland & Melton MP Alicia Kearns

I don’t know who first came up with the name, but it spread like wildfire. And that is the thing to take note of. A good name, a light-hearted name, encourages everyone to use it – including journalists who are looking to inject fun into the news.

I have blogged about this before, in 2015 in fact, when I observed that a dentist from Minnesota who mistakenly shot a protected lion whilst on safari, was very unlucky to the extent that the lion was named Cecil.?Had the lion had been called Dhahabu (Swahili for gold) or just had a number, there would have been a lot less publicity. The name Cecil was enough to ensure the dead lion was reported around the world.

‘Pork Pie Plot’ is inspired and will probably make it into pub quizzes and books of political ephemera. It will also be associated with Alicia Kearns all her political career.

And yet businesses I work with are always so reluctant to give new products and services interesting names. Or even interesting nicknames. If you call your new portal ‘Babs’ or ‘Shirley’ or name a high-tech vehicle ‘the Batmobile’ people will talk about it more. Journalists will write about it more. The actual logic behind the name can be very tenuous (as in the Pork Pie Plot) but if the name is fun …it will work.

And surely, after the last two years, fun is something we all need.

This article has also appeared as a Media Coach blog post.