U-turn at One Alfred Place

It seems that there's been a rethink at One Alfred Place, the private members' club that has been axing its members.

This purge has caused quite a fuss, particularly when I discovered that my old friend Steve Tappin - the headhunter-cum-executive coach - was on the hit list.

Now Sharon Brittan, OAP's new chief exec, emails to say it has all been a terrible misunderstanding: "Steve is a highly valued member of One Alfred Place. He signed up to the club when access to it was not restricted. We have since imposed a time restriction of 100 days' annual usage on all new club memberships and on those renewing their membership. We were delighted to offer Steve to renew his membership on these new standard terms and did so in early February before any of the recent press comment on it. We understand Steve is currently considering whether to renew. We apologise for any misunderstanding caused by recent press reports."

Who'd have thought it?

A bunch of Twitterers

My One Alfred Place stories (see here and here) in the Independent on Sunday seem to be causing a bit of a fuss within the Twitterati.

Many seem to assume that the quotes from chief exec Sharon Brittan are all part of some grand spinning strategy the club had cooked up, so they wonder why OAP would chose to run its PR in such an incendiary manner. The answer is obvious, Twitterers: it didn't!

Here's what happened: dear old SlackBelly found out about the One Alfred changes from a source and rang up the club for a response. They gave me Brittan's telephone number, I called her unannounced, asked her what was going on, wrote down her responses and then put them in the newspaper. Simples.

There was once a word which described this process, although sadly I fear it to be a forgotten art. It used to be called journalism.