Joe is talented, good-looking and committed; when he performs, his connection with the public is immediate and effortless. Women – especially – are spellbound and almost mechanically pull out their mobile phone and start filming him. The romantic theme of his music might help cast the spell: all of his songs are about love. He says he wrote one about being hung-over once but even that could be classed as a borderline love song. Whatever it is that makes him so appealing, it is working: he has 10,000 Facebook fans and when he mentioned an upcoming trip to Europe he was asked to perform (and offered a couch) in most of that continent’s cities.
Cartoon by Gabriel Robinson at Ebag Pictures
We have sacked the journos but we still need PR professionals and with traditional advertising following traditional media down the drain, we need more and more of them because the media (orthodox and social alike) remains the key stepping stone to achieving fame and getting through that funnel is still key and still bloody hard whether the gate-keeper is democratic and techy or old-fashioned and beholden to a media mogul. 
