Dominic Stevenson originally had his heart set on a career in the media, but when his media experience won him a job in the PR department of a local NHS trust, he discovered his real passion lay in communications, and in particular in communicating on behalf of organisations whose life-saving work he finds inspirational.

Having worked in a number of PR roles for NHS or Department Of Health units, he is now Press Officer at Moorfields Eye Hospital, an NHS Foundation Trust in central London. We spoke to Dominic about his career to date.

Will Wood (pictured with one of his sports clients, Man City and England player Micah Richards) first got an interest in PR at university when he started learning the trade while promoting comedy gigs in Manchester. He started working as a freelance PR, specialising in his two passions, sport and comedy, while still a student, eventually creating an agency around all his various projects, Multitude Media. Will still specialises in the sport and comedy sectors, working for both individuals and companies in both those industries. We spoke to him about his career to date.

Dan Lambden first worked for creative consumer agency Cake as an intern, having discovered a passion for PR during earlier work experience with a music PR company. As he graduated, a role came up at Cake and, having impressed during his internship, he got an interview and was offered the job. Now an Account Executive with the agency he works with a wide range of clients helping devise and deliver creative campaigns.

Having first become aware of the PR industry while on the receiving end of publicist phone calls when editing his student newspaper, it was only when he took on a part time job with Lewisham Homes as their sole press officer that Paul Nezandonyi realised there was a lot more to the communications profession than many realise.

After completing his MA he became full-time at the social housing company, and has since expanded his role so to oversee events, stakeholder engagement, digital and internal communications as well as media relations.

We spoke to Paul about his career so far and his opinions on the communications industry.

Rob Dyson began his PR career by asking the marketing chief at The Civil Service Benevolent Fund to give him a shot as a temp in the charity’s press office. Nearly a decade on he is now PR Manager for Whizz-Kidz, a brilliant, young people’s mobility charity (and the beneficiaries of the current Blue Peter Appeal) where he leads all communications activity.

He is also a board member at CharityComms, the professional membership body for charity communicators, and runs the Third Sector PR & Comms Network on Facebook. He tweets at @robmdyson.

We spoke to Rob about his career to date, and to find out what a job in charity PR involves.

In a band, and having promised the Arts Council he’d help promote new artists in return for a five grand grant, David Silverman found himself on the phone to a local newspaper securing coverage. It was then he realised he should perhaps quit the band and start a career in PR.

But the passion for music remained, so he moved to London and started working in music publicity. In late 2004 the entrepreneurial bug that had led to the aforementioned Arts Council grant returned, and he set up his own agency, Outpost.

Although probably best known for working with music clients, including labels, festivals, artists and DJs, David’s agency has gone beyond traditional music PR, working with brands like O2, Fiat, Red Stripe and Calvin Klein, though often utilising the company’s music expertise as part of those campaigns.

We spoke to David about his career to date, life at Outpost, and what makes a PR tick.

Charlotte Robertson is an alumni of the acclaimed PR Internship Programme created and run by Taylor Bennett in association with Brunswick. The programme is designed to encourage and enable talented young people from black and ethnic minority communities to pursue a career in corporate communications, and participants are all graduates from the University Of East London. Last Autumn Charlotte took part in an intensive ten week training and internship programme, learning everything there is to know about communications, the media and business. At the end of the programme she was offered a trainee executive post at Brunswick itself, and continues to work for the company, now as a fully fledged account executive.

Graeme Anthony is a consumer PR bod who recently relocated from Manchester to London and, on arriving in the capital, starting looking for his perfect PR job. But he employed a bit of imagination in his personal job hunting pitch.

So much so, we know about him after seeing We Are Social claiming they’d just seen the best job application ever. As the job interviews began, and with a deal very close to being done, we hear, we took the opportunity to ask Graeme about his career, his hair and that CVIV (that’s a curriculum vitae interactive video, by the way).

Junior Ayanbeku (pictured on the left) took part in the 2009 Brunswick Internship Programme, the unique training initiative run by Brunswick, Unicorn Jobs and our sister company Taylor Bennett to address diversity issues in the PR and corporate communications industry.

On each programme six black and ethnic minority graduates from the University Of East London receive ten weeks of intensive and practical training in the worlds of PR, media and business, equipping them for a career in communications. The interns are not guaranteed a job at the end of the internship, but participants receive careers coaching during and after the programme from experts at both Unicorn Jobs and Taylor Bennett.

Junior didn’t secure a job immediately after the internship finished last December. But, still convinced that PR is the industry for him, he has now begun proactively searching for the right entry level role. He has agreed to blog about his job search for the Unicorn Jobs website, and you will able to follow his progress here.

As way of an introduction, we spoke to Junior about his academic background, the internship programme and his ambitions.

Melissa Mace had her heart set on a career in PR from school age, so chose to study Public Relations at London Metropolitan University. That said, while recognising the value of that course, she’s a great believer that you can’t beat doing when it comes to being a great communicator, and she recommends that all PR students follow her example and scatter their degree time with plenty of work experience.

Thanks to all that work experience, Melissa was able to secure an agency role soon after graduation, though she has since made the jump into in-house, where she finds PR work even more rewarding. Having previously worked at both finance and mobile companies, she now works for Whitbread as PR Manager for their Costa Coffee brand overseeing consumer and media relations activity.

We spoke to Melissa about her career to date.

Helen Trevorrow studied Communication Studies at Trinity & All Saints College in Leeds, before getting her first professional break at a London PR agency via a work experience placement. With over thirteen years experience she has worked in-house and in agencies, in particular spending time at Ketchum working with the likes of Hugo Boss and Max Factor.

In 2005 Helen launched her own PR agency, Green Row, with the aim of providing “honest advice that helps clients transform their businesses”. Green Row provides strategic advice and runs campaigns for large, small and start-up companies, as well as providing a range of PR training.

We spoke to Helen about her career to date, about her experiences setting up and running Green Row, and her advice for budding communicators.

Having first discovered an interest in communications while working in project management at Edexcel, Sarah Willoughby is now a Communications Officer for NHS Hounslow.

Her job involves a wide range of external and internal communication tasks, as she helps this primary care trust communicate with its staff, patients, local community and the wider world.

We spoke to Sarah about her career so far, her thoughts on social media and diversity in PR, and her tips for aspiring communicators.

Jason Gale fell into PR while working as a director of a TV creative company during the dot-com boom. Once the dot-com bubble had burst, and Jason was considering his options, he decided to set himself up as PR agency, and approached some entertainment venues to be his first clients.

That became Handmade UK. Six years on, and now with a team of six, Handmade are still active in the entertainment space, representing both venues, bars and restaurants as well as individual personalities. But the company has also branched into working for brands, especially innovative independent companies with interesting stories to tell.

We spoke to Jason about his career, his company, Handmade’s internships, and what advice he has for those starting out on a PR career.

Claude Peters was a participant on the 2009 Brunswick Internship Programme, the unique training initiative that encourages and enables graduates from black and ethnic minority backgrounds to launch a career in PR and communications.

Coordinated by Unicorn Jobs with support from its sister company Taylor Bennett and, of course Brunswick, this programme provides six graduates from the University Of East London (12 in 2010) with a ten-week introduction to the media and PR industries, and the way business and the City works.

With a performing arts background, Claude followed up his time on the internship with work experience at Brunswick’s arts PR company, before taking on a role at their sister online content firm Cantos Communications.

With the first six interns to go through the Brunswick Internship in 2010 now selected, we reconnected with Claude to find out about his time on the programme and what he has been doing since.

Having got his first exposure to the PR industry by handling the press for his rugby team at college, Rhodri Harries got his first job simply by answering an ad in the Evening Standard. However, his career really took off once he joined the then rapidly expanding GCI, where he quickly worked his way up the hierarchy, ultimately to the role of Deputy MD.

In 2007 he moved to independent PR and digital agency Kaizo, where he is Managing Director, running the day to day operations of the company and working on campaigns with the likes of Unilever, Serco, Cisco, CA and Flip Video, the latter winning the firm Best Consumer Marketing campaign at last year’s PR Week Awards.

We spoke to Rhodri about his career to date, asked him about some recent campaigns, and found out what his tips are for aspiring PR people.

Kate Hartley is a partner at Carrot Communications, a content, communications and PR agency.

She’s directed campaigns for clients as varied as Atos Origin, Anheuser-Busch theme parks, P&O and Overture, and now specialises in communications strategies for smaller, fast-growth companies.

She is particularly interested in the development of conversations and customer engagement over social media and digital channels, and blogs about the subject over at The Stick.

Having graduated from St Hilda’s College, Oxford in 2004, Roberta Whitter qualified as a chartered accountant with Deloitte & Touche, where she worked on statutory audits, due diligence and solicitors’ accounts rules compliance for a range of clients, including WPP, Allen and Overy, Serco and Thomas Pink.

She moved into PR when she joined leading corporate communications partnership Brunswick, where she combines her finance background with her media and communication skills working with a range of leading companies on financial calendar work, M&A, investor relations and media handling.

We spoke to Roberta about her career so far, and her involvement in the Brunswick Internship Programme that is coordinated by Unicorn Jobs.

Nikki Rooke has spent her entire PR career working in the motoring sector, though has actually worked in a wide range of communication roles in very different environments, including three years touring the world with the A1 Grand Prix.

She is now Head Of Communications for the motoring industry’s main trade organisation, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, leading the body’s PR and comms strategy to ensure her industry’s voice is heard by government, the media and, ultimately, society at large.

We spoke to Nikki about her career to date, the challenges of her current role, and her advice for those at the start of their PR career.

Katie studied PR at Bournemouth University, graduating from there last June. During the course she did a one year placement at Cow PR, working with a range of consumer clients, including Bandai, fish4jobs, Aunt Bessie’s and Whole Earth. Since graduating she has stayed in the consumer PR domain, now based at Eulogy! and working with clients like Santander, moneysupermarket.com, Royal Mail Special Stamps and the Post Office.

Pictured: Katie (inset) and the rest of the Eulogy team (Main)

Dan Humphreys began his career as a journalist on a local newspaper, before moving into PR by joining one of the press teams he had previously been harassing for comment – that of the London Ambulance Service. A number of in-house PR roles followed, including several at ITN, in particular as Press Manager for Channel 4 News.

It was perhaps that experience that attracted Dan to Markettiers4dc, a PR agency that specialises in broadcast media, and which enables its clients to get radio, television and online coverage, partly by creating bespoke the kind of audio and video content that will appeal to resource-strapped broadcast journalists, and TV, radio and web producers.

We spoke to Dan about his career to date, and asked him for an insight on changes in the broadcast media, and the impact that is having on the PR profession.

If you want proof that work experience can really help your career, look no further than Anna Gawan, whose first role at IPC Media was a fortnight’s internship in the press office. Convinced that a career in PR was for her, when an entry-level role came up she jumped at the chance to apply.

She has since worked her way up to a Press Officer role, looking after the PR for a wide range of titles published by the magazine title, from Country Life and Horse & Hound through to music titles NME and Uncut. She is also studying for a diploma with the CIPR, and recently undertook some research on what the role of Twitter on PR/journalist relationships.

We caught up with Anna to find out more about her career to date, her current role at IPC, and her findings in that Twitter survey.

Richard Dawes (on the right) spent over a decade working with numerous chart topping artists as part of the press team at various labels within the Universal Music empire, most recently helping Take That regain their place at the top of the UK pop tree as Head Of Publicity at Polydor Records.

This summer he parted company with Polydor to join forces with former Outside Organisation publicist Stuart Bell to launch a brand new entertainment PR agency, DawBell PR.

We spoke to Richard about his career to date, the launch of DawBell, and his opinion of what is required for successful music PR campaigns in 2009.

Daljit Bhurji got his first job in PR by answering a job ad in the Media Guardian. That job was with digital agency Hotwire PR, where he had the opportunity to work with a range of internet-based clients during the peak of the dot.com boom, and beyond.

That experience gave Daljit an inside knowledge of the internet sector, and a headstart on the new digital communication platforms and social networking services that have since revolutionised how companies communicate with their stakeholders.

Utilising that knowledge, he co-founded a new agency last year, Diffusion PR, which provides clients with an integrated approach, developing communication strategies where digital and traditional PR work as one.

We spoke to Daljit about his career to date, the creation of Diffusion, and his tips for those who aspire to work in digital PR.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is approaching once more, and esPResso’s sister publication ThreeWeeks will be covering it all. So we thought that, once again, it would be nice to put a little spotlight of our own on the PR side of the the world’s largest arts festival. Last year we spoke to one of the publicists whose job it is to promote specific shows, so this year we thought we’d speak to a communications person involved in the organisation behind the Fringe festival.

The Edinburgh Fringe is, and always has been, an open-access festival. Any performer, producer or entrepreneur can stage a show at the festival providing they can find the money and a room – there are no artistic criteria. That’s why the festival is so big and so eclectic. There is, however, a Fringe Society, which exists to support the community of independent people who stage shows and run venues. They recently introduced a new management structure after a difficult 2008 that was dogged by problems with a new box office system, and Neil Mackinnon has taken on one of those new management roles as Head Of External Affairs.

Previously he worked in political communications, PRing for the Scottish Liberal Democrats, so a move into the arts world is an interesting career progression – though with a festival involving so many stakeholders, all with their own agendas, those political skills will definitely come in handy. We spoke to Neil about his career to date and his new role communicating on behalf of the world’s biggest cultural fest.

A former journalist and TV and radio presenter, Kizzi Nkwocha knows everything there is to know about the media, and the media business, and provides that knowledge to a wide variety of companies and individuals through his public relations agency PRhq.

He specialises in a very unique kind of media relations, not only helping clients to secure press coverage, but also advising them on how to cope with and capitalise on existing media interest. He also plays a broker role, negotiating commercial deals between his clients and media companies for exclusive rights to stories; rights normally secured by the media paying the client a fee.

His agency represents a diverse range of companies, and also a number of famous TV and sports personalities, meaning his client list is pretty eclectic, including Jubilee 2000, the Malaysian Tourist Board, the King of Uganda, Atlantic crossing teen Michael Perham, Dragons Den funded businessman Levi Roots, cricketer Wasim Akram and boxer Chris Eubank.

We spoke to Kizzi about his career to date, and what his work via PRhq involves.

Bieneosa Ebite first moved into PR when a marketing role at Western Union led to her spearheading an internal communications project, and then representing the company to relevant journalists. Since then she has worked in communications at McDonald’s and the Home Office, before moving into the agency side of the industry as MD of Bright Star Public Relations.

Bright Star work to create “public relations strategies based on understanding business objectives”, and do so in a number of different sectors, including food & drink, not-for-profit and professional services.

Bieneosa is also able to use her role at Bright Star to pursue one of her personal passions, tackling diversity issues in the PR sector, and helping state the very real business case for why the corporate communications industry needs to draw on a more diverse workforce.

We spoke to Bieneosa about her career to date and her work for Bright Star, and found out more about her opinions on social media and diversity in PR.

After working for two regional PR companies in Nottingham, Dom Whitehurst relocated to London and, presumably by combining his scientific background with his communications skills, found himself working at two great technology PR agencies. The second was Hotwire. More recently he and three colleagues have been busy developing a new sister agency to Hotwire, taking some of the technology and social media expertise possessed by Dom and other Hotwire people, and applying them to a wider range of clients than just tech firms. With that new company, 33 Digital, now full up and running, we caught up with Dom to find out a little about his career to date and his new agency.

ATOM PR’s Dwynwen Williams says her first attempts at communicating involved calling her grandmother a “stupid old woman” at the grand old age of two.

Luckily her skills improved with age, and at school she found a passion for languages and communication as well as a flair for setting up small charitable enterprises and get-rich-quick schemes (“one evening of flapjack-making could make you £7.50 the next day” she tells us “result!”).

Despite choosing to do a Law Degree, she soon decided that a career in law was not for her and got back on track by way of an Information Studies masters which, she says, set her up with “great analytical skills and an appreciation of the media and the availability of information”. Coupling these skills with her passion for writing (and her obsession with crossing t’s and dotting i’s) Dwynwen found herself moving on to PR roles. She now runs ATOM PR with her sister Elliw.

Dwynwen calls ATOM “a small but perfectly formed bilingual communications agency”. They have worked with over 50 clients from the UK and beyond, and Dwynwen says that she and Elliw, as well as providing a boutique, bespoke service for their clients, are aiming to prove that you can work in a job you love wherever you choose.

We spoke to Dwynwen about her career to date.

This weekend sees the launch of the 2009 Brighton Festival, a three week programme of theatre, music, art, dance and literary talks staged in venues across Brighton. It’s one of the UK’s biggest and most established cultural festivals, and with a Fringe, art festival and music convention running alongside it, Brighton really is one of the most exciting places to be in May.

Getting the main Brighton Festival up and running is a big task, and there’s a year round team of people that make it happen. PR is, of course, an important part of that. Shelley Bennett is the Brighton Festival’s Press & PR Manager, and we spoke to her to find out what communicating a major cultural festival involves, and to get the lowdown on a career in arts PR.

After starting out as a journalist, Stephen Waddington moved into PR in the early nineties, specialising in tech PR and working with both technology start-ups and some of the world’s largest tech brands.

In 1998 he co-founded tech PR firm Rainer PR, which subsequently became part of the Loewy group. Last month Loewy announced it was merging its various PR businesses to create a new multi-discipline agency better positioned to deal with the challenges, and opportunities, presented by the changing media landscape, and the increasingly brand-savvy consumer. The new agency, Speed Communications, provides consultancy advice to clients in the technology, consumer, corporate and business communications sectors, and brings together the teams from BMA Communications, Custard PR, Lighthouse PR, Mantra PR and Rainier PR.

Rainer’s employees will become the tech team at the new firm, Speed Communications, while Waddington will head up the new business as MD. We spoke to him about his career to date, and to get, well, up to speed on the motivation for creating Speed.

James Rowe is Press Officer for Firebox.com, the online retailer particularly known for being first to sell a whole range of fun new products, from baby toys to high-tech playthings. James began his professional PR career with the company two years ago, and quickly found it combined two of his favourite things, communications and gadgets.

We spoke to James about what a PR role for an online retailer like Firebox.com involves, and to get his tips for others embarking on a PR career, and for those interested in this particular part of the industry.

If you’re starting out on your own PR career and James’ work interests you, then how about some work experience in the Firebox press team? Firebox are offering internships for bright and enthusiastic university students and graduates. These are unpaid internships, though Firebox would cover travel expenses and the experience should be invaluable. The length of a placement depends upon the individual. To apply click here and email Claire Wood with a covering letter and CV.

Having studied PR at university, Karen Bennett took the obvious first career step and got a job in an agency working for big corporate clients. But the corporate side of the industry soon lost its appeal for Karen, so she went back to studying, this time medicine.

It was through those studies that she came across the International AIDS Conference, and found a role where she could put her PR experience and medical knowledge to very good use, to help to support those living with or leading the fight against HIV and AIDS.

Since 2006 she has been working as Senior Communications Manager for the International AIDS Society, the NGO which stages the international conferences. This is a PR role which offers all the job satisfaction she felt was lacking in the corporate sector.

Unicorn Jobs student contributor Katerina Elias-Trostmann spoke to Karen to find out what working as a comms manager in an NGO is like, and why she prefers it so much to her PR roles in the corporate world

James Kingsley discovered his passion for communicating while studying English Literature and International Politics at the University of Manchester, though it was only after graduating in 2006 he realised that passion made him perfect for a career in public relations.

His first job was as PR Executive for PRUPIM, the global property investment arm of Prudential. Having a few years of good PR experience at a big firm under his belt, he decided to look for a new challenge in a smaller firm – and it was during that search that Unicorn Jobs placed him into the role of Communications Manager at investment fund managers Marwyn.

We spoke to James about his career to date, the differences between a PR role at a bigger and smaller company, and his average day at Marwyn.

Nikki Wright runs London based Global Publicity, a music PR firm with a difference. She specialises in the live music sector, and in particular in PRing music festivals outside the UK, both to a British and a global audience.

Festivals she works on include Melt in Germany, Tignesfest in the French Alps, the Pohoda Festival in Slovakia and Serbia’s popular Exit Festival.

We spoke to her about how she got into music PR, and about the challenges of PRing events on a global level.

Oliver Rawlins knows it sounds cheesy to say so, but he’s proud to work for the BBC. He looks after corporate and external affairs for BBC Worldwide, the Corporation’s commercial arm. We spoke to him about his career so far, what it’s like communicating for the BBC, and got some tips for people thinking about working at the broadcaster.

Jackie Rowley has had a fascinating career. Starting out as a broadcast journalist for the BBC, ultimately presenting on BBC News 24, she moved into PR after being asked to become spokeswoman for then Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy.

She took on her current job, Director Of Communications, after Kennedy stood down as leader of the Liberals, faced with the task of communicating on behalf of an organisation that regulates the practice or 240,000 doctors across the UK.

We spoke to Jackie about her career to date, her role at the GMC, and what advice she’d have for others embarking on a career in PR.

Christine Armstrong joined worldwide advertising agency network BBDO five years ago, and is now their Director of Communications and Talent.

BBDO is one of the world’s biggest network of advertising, marketing and communications agencies. According to Wikipedia they have 17,200 employees in 287 offices in 77 countries – which poses quite a communications challenge, internally and externally.

We spoke to Christine about her career in communications and her role at BBDO, and took the opportunity to find out a little about how an advertising agency works.

We’ve had interviews with people who work in music PR before, but while Richard Mollet is very much involved in the music business this is a very different kind of communications.

Richard is Director of Public Affairs for the BPI, the trade body for record companies in the UK. He leads the organisation’s government communications, an important role given the record industry’s reliance on so called intellectual property – that is to say copyrights – the existence and protection of which requirement government and parliamentary support.

We spoke to Richard to find out what heading up public affairs for an organisation like the BPI involves, and also to find out how he got into the lobbying business in the first place.

The music business has traditionally split its consumer PR into two divisions – the press department, who try to get newspapers and magazines to review and write about artists and releases, and the promotions or plugging department, who try to persaude radio stations, DJs and TV shows to play their music. Most labels and agencies will have different departments and people to handle each area.

But in more recent years music companies have had to establish a third strand to their publicity work – digital. With young music fans among the earliest adopters to the internet, those in music PR quickly had to learn about and communicate with a whole plethora of new e-zines, chat rooms, fan groups and streaming music services in order to reach a demographic that increasingly shun more traditional media.

Alex Fordham recently launched an online department at music PR firm Scruffy Bird, having previously been involved in online PR at independent record company V2 and two other music PR companies. Unicorn Jobs spoke to Alex about his career so far, what online PR involves, and what tips he’d have for others considering a career PRing music.

Tom Murphy has been working in both agency and in-house PR roles across North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America since 1991 and is currently responsible for Public Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility for Microsoft in Ireland.

Prior to joining Microsoft in August 2005, he was Director of Corporate Communications for Cape Clear Software and his most recent agency posting was as general manager of EMEA Consulting for Text 100, where he helped clients shape and execute PR plans in multiple countries across the region.

But we first came across Tom through his blog. He has been blogging about Public Relations since 2002 and his Murphy’s Law blog is one of the best. With more and more PR people now considering the implications of blogging and social media on their communication strategies, we caught up with Tom who, as both an experienced blogger and communicator, is particularly well positioned to offer some tips in this area.

You can read Tom’s blog here

From mortgages – to pensions – to pork bellies. Roman Townsend, Account Director at financial services PR agency Penrose Financial, tells us how he brings home the bacon.

Leila Reuter, now a consultant at communications search company Taylor Bennett, specialises in financial PR and investor relations. She began her own communications career working in the former at a large PR agency, and then moved into the latter, working in-house at a major bank. We spoke to Leila about her decision to move from one to the other, and questioned her on what exactly investor relations involved.

When we say that Karen Watt of communications search company Taylor Bennett is a ‘Public Relations General Practitioner’, we mean her career has been so varied she’s worked right across the communications spectrum, in-house and in agencies, in the UK and abroad, from fashion to airlines and lots in between. Now a Taylor Bennett consultant specialising in internal and change communication, we talked her through her career to date, and found out how it all began with a textiles degree and an inspirational lecture from Lynne Franks.

Internal communications – the discipline that grew out of old-style ‘employee relations’ and gradually moved from being an HR function to being very much part of the communications mix – has surely now come of age, and is generally recognised as an important part of any company’s communication activity. But for many people working in PR, especially agency PR, the work of an internal communicator remains a mystery. We spoke to Gillian Tong, formerly global head of internal comms at Deutsche Bank, to find out what being an internal communicator is all about.

The Edinburgh Festival, the largest culture festival on the planet, kicked off last weekend, offering an unrivalled three week programme of theatre, comedy, music, musicals, art, dance, talks and debates – esPResso’s sister publication ThreeWeeks is covering it all as we speak.

With more than 700 independent promoters and producers staging, between them, more than 2000 shows over a three week period, there is a considerable publicity machine behind the festival as performers compete for column inches and the ticket buyer’s pound. Many London entertainment public relations firms relocate to the Scottish capital for August to lead the PR for a group of artists and performers.

One such PR firm is Prospero Communications, run by Madelaine Bennett. Her company is especially interesting in that, while she is currently busy leading the publicity campaigns for some of the UK’s best stand up comedians and ‘Pot Noodle: The Musical’, outside of August she works for a wide range of clients in much more serious industries.

esPResso spoke to Madeline about her career, her company, and PRing musical theatre themed around Pot Noodle.

Every issue we talk to another PR person about their work and career to date. This week Ben Matthews, who went straight from university to a great job in PR at Waughton despite not really knowing that that’s what he wanted to do while at university. More recently he joined Hotwire PR as a Digital Media Executive.