That, sir, is the smell of....

Yeah, we all had a bloody good laugh at today’s story about the Ali-G-speaking chav girl who ordered a “cab-innit?” and, instead of getting a taxi, received a cabinet the following morning.
Read through the story and it mentions furniture firm Displaysense. Dig deeper and you find the story on a free press release service, with a company biog helpfully supplied. Dig even deeper and you find the same company reported in the press earlier in the year as having been the victim of an unusual assault by a non-existent member of the public who was caught having sex with one of its mannequins.
Both stories are bullshit. The story is clearly a PR plant, and it’s a sad fact that the papers are passing it off as true.
Displaysense deserve some praise for the stunts, because its job is to shift furniture. We should be less forgiving of Her Majesty’s Press, which loves to get on its sanctimonious high horse about shagging CEOs, lying politicians, ranting mono-limbed celebrities, neglectful parents and declining standards in public life. Stories like this serve as a reminder that they just need to fill the required number of pages with newsprint to sell, and sod the truth.
If you think this is unlikely, then its happened before. Anyone remember stories about Paul Hucker? He’s the chap who insured himself against the grief of seeing the England footie team getting knocked out of the World Cup. This was picked up by virtually every newspaper and reported as fact. As revealed by Guardian journalist Nick Davies, it was PR from a insurance company.