The Flackenhacks: About the night before last. . .

OK. Now at least one hoity-toity sort has expressed concern that no one has blogged much about The Flackenhacks.

Melanie at Fake Plastic Noodle -- which deals among other things with "avant-garde PR" -- means that "either A) They were boring or B) Everyone drank so much they forgot what happened".

Avant-garde PR? I wouldn't know it if it hit me in the face.

As for yesterday, I took the day off. Well, mostly. Making up for lost time, here's my stuff:

Stephen Davies of WebITPR has kindly posted some pix here:

Among other things:

• Our spies tell us that the large contingent from Midnight narrowly avoided a ruck with a bunch of "gobby" lads on the train back home to Brighton. The boys had a lucky escape, we reckon.

• Acceptance speech of the night came from the otherwise mild-mannered Matt Loney, editorial director of ZDNet. Taking the gong for B2B site of the year after trouncing The Register and IT Week, Loney thanked his shortlisted rivals for "being so shit".

• We spied two Next Fifteen MDs -- Nick Giles of Text 100 and Grant Currie of Inferno -- bitching about cost pressures. Of course, this is what MDs do over beers. But it would appear that Microsoft's recent decision to cut 20% off its UK PR budget has left the bean counters at Next Fifteen jittery about the costs of Text's impending office relocation. . . Next stop IKEA, Nick. . .

• What goes on tour: Who was the agency fromage who slagged off a particular account manager in front of the cameras on the night? If Fullrun was TWL, we'd tell you. But we're not, so we won't. Anyhow, the boss in question did email us this morning sounding a bit concerned that we'd release this bit of video on to YouTube. . .

• Lost minds, lost property: Sonus did an Amy Winehouse and had their trophy mislaid, nicked, whatever. We're ordering a new one for them. They seem very keen. Which is nice.
  

• One half of TWL managed to mislay a laptop while stumbling around Mayfair trying to locate Daryl Willcox's private members' club in the wee hours. . .

• The Mystery Of The Porn Tree: OK, here's how it goes. On the night, Nicky Alvey, the freelancer, mentioned it to Andrew Smith of Object Marketing. Apparently, it will mean something to anyone who worked at Brodeur in the 1990s. . . We really need to know more about this, so c'mon guys, don't be shy.
  

• Kevin Withnall of Vanson Bourne has no recollection of spilling a glass of wine all over Giles Fraser of Brands2Life. And Tim Hoang of Rainier PR has no recollection of knocking a glass of champagne over Chris Long from the BBC. Which is a pity. Because Long apparently turned round and agreed to run the story they'd been discussing. . . In the words of Andrew Smith: "Barely 8pm and already people falling over -- marvelous!"

• Talking of which, the liveblogging didn’t work very well. The keyboards at the Audi Forum were weird demented German metallic things. Built for looking at, obviously. Which seems to have irritated Fiona Blamey of Prompt Communications a bit. . . Sorry Fiona: we'll get our act together next time round.
  

• We met up with Simon Corbett, late of Edelman and now running the UK branch of Blanc & Otus. Fresh-faced Corbett has a secret history as a dot.com entrepreneur. Sounds like it'll come in handy at Blanc & Otus. . . Someone else -- not Simon, obviously -- suggested that the outgoing Blanc & Otus MD Simon Glazer has been exiled to the PR equivalent of the Aleutian Islands. Ah yes; we think we should be told. . .

• The smokers' huddle outside in Piccadilly was a nightmare. You'd go out there, have a smoke, get ready to go in, only to be pinned up against the wall by a new arrival. The fetching Alexandra Pullen of Text 100 seemed to spend the entire night outside. . .

• . . . As did the wonderful Jessica Twentyman, who was not best pleased that Dan Ilett walked away with freelancer of the year. Putting on her best Judy Garland-on-medication voice, Twentyman was last heard bellowing "I own this town" down the full length of Piccadilly. . . Note to TWL: This was what stopped the traffic, not the big pink cock.

• Sir Big Wadd of Rainier reckons it was like the "Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where everyone gets reunited after a long absence". That's good, we think.

• Hotwire? Is it being sold? Who knows? Alexis Dalrymple of that parish wins our award for bullshitter of the night for his performance on this score. Whenever anyone asked him what was going on, Dalrymple raised his voice to 90Db, flapped his arms in wide circles and talked a load of bollocks. Superb.

• Someone emailed us today saying how taken they'd been with Jennifer Walker of Porter Novelli. Marriage was suggested. Not that we're an advocate of arranged unions or anything like that, but Jennifer, if you're interested, drop us a line. We'll put you in touch with the smitten lad. He's a good 'un.

• Moral guardian of the night: Nick Booth holding a bottle of Becks in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other, urgently telling me to quieten down the audience during the ceremony. At least, that seemed to be what he was saying. . .

• Mike Magee -- recently returned from a two-month sabbatical -- left early, excusing himself with the line that his wife had to be up early in the morning. Said Magee: "She works for the NHS, you know." Nice one, Mike. Tell us, though: exactly how much did you make from flogging The Inquirer to VNU?

• Big thanks to. . . our impeccable (and well-dressed) front-of-housers from Spark and Midnight: you were fantstically well-organised. Thanks also to TWL, DJ John Ozimek (from Liberty Communications) and compere Paul Wooding (of Weber Shandwick). We couldn't have done it without you.

• Thanks, too, to our sponsors, whose proud logos are lined up alongside this post. We hope it worked well for you. . .

• I've got a stack of people to call and enough breakfast, lunch and dinner invites to last six months . . . Meanwhile, everyone's assuming we'll do it again next year. Looks like we've got four sponsors lined up already. We still haven't got a clue about the size of this year's booze bill, though. . .