Borkowski Media Trends: Does Lunch have a PR Problem & MORE

PLUS: Chess's PR Checkmate | Luigi Mangione | Lily Phillips

Does Lunch have a PR problem?

In a puff-piece interview with The Spectator yesterday, presumably intended to introduce her to that publication’s soft-right readership, Kemi Badenoch proudly declared that “lunch is for wimps”, sandwiches are not “real food”, and that her mid-day meal of choice would be a steak. This has gone down about as well as could be expected: Keir Starmer’s spokesperson weighed in to say that the Prime Minister is “quite happy with a sandwich lunch”, while The Times called her comments “a deeply unpatriotic take on a British institution.” It is also not for the first time that the Tory party have brought that institution into disrepute: Dominic Raab was the subject of much mockery in 2018 for allegedly having exactly the same lunch every day, a Pret chicken Caesar baguette, a “superfruit” pot and a smoothie.

All of this comes in the wake of the recent consternation surrounding the Islington restaurant The Yellow Bittern, an ostensibly Marxist establishment so dedicated to the concept that it opens only for that long gone pleasure, the boozy weekday lunch (albeit in two strict sittings at 12pm and 2pm, respectively). Proprietor Hugh Corcoran hit the headlines shortly after it’s opening by proclaiming that people weren’t spending enough money, coining the immortal line “Any member of the organised working class can afford a meal such as this once a week or once a month.” The restaurant has subsequently had mixed-to-positive reviews, including from Jay Rayner and Giles Coren.

So – where does the lunch go from here? Badenoch’s position, not dissimilarly to Corcoran’s, is broadly ideological, rooted in the individualistic idea of keeping one’s nose firmly to the grindstone. But it is also incoherent – a steak is far more time consuming than the humble sandwich. Similarly, in the world of working from home and the omnipresence of meal deals, a warming bit of Irish stew, eaten under the watchful eye of a picture of Lenin, sounds like an impossible luxury for most office workers, who simply don’t have the time. It leaves the concept, and the British institution described by The Times, in a kind of cultural purgatory – our most forgotten, and our once most loved, meal of the day.

If lunch, then, has a PR problem, and if we are, as the owners of The Yellow Bittern would likely want, to herald a revival, where do we start? The answer could lie in a four day week – an extra day for a long lunch – or maybe more simply than that, it’s a campaign on behalf of a single hour in the day, enough time for a sandwich or a steak. There’s a canny tagline for Pret, Itsu, or whoever in 2025: “They told you lunch is dead. Prove them wrong.”

New Chess Champion could be Checkmate for global growth

Yesterday, the youngest-ever chess champion was crowned: 18-year-old prodigy Gukesh from India defeated China's Ding Liren to make history. Widely considered chess' most prominent crown, the contest usually fails to capture the world's attention outside the chess bubble. However, against the backdrop of the game undergoing a new surge of prominence since the pandemic, there's an opportunity for it to rally behind its emerging talent.

If we distill it to a PR problem then there are a few factors to consider. Firstly the world's #1 Magnus Carlsen has voiced his concerns about the slow-paced, hours-long 'classical' format, which decides the World Championship. Carlsen is simply too good and has lost interest when no one has challenged him to a competitive game for some time - a glaring problem in the current chess landscape.

Secondly, the pandemic sparked a chess renaissance, fueled by Netflix’s Queen’s Gambit, which saw the game grow exponentially thanks to viral events like PogChamps, where influencers faced off in casual online matches, and the self-explanatory 'chessboxing', which also leveraged chess' personalities. The game continued to grow thanks to the infamous cheating scandal involving Carlsen and Hans Niemann, incurring the intrigue of social media that drew even more eyeballs culminating with theories involving anal beads as a cheating device.

Simply put, chess is at its most relevant because personality has ultimately driven its popularity. Chess streamers, across YouTube and Twitch continue to be the biggest advocates of the game and who themselves are capitalising on the boom. Extraordinarily, entertainment trumps skill, which is the throughline to all the events mentioned above.

So while chess has made history, simply making Gukesh the poster boy isn't enough to continue its momentum. While Gukesh will inspire millions of Indian fans, FIDE, chess' governing body, needs to focus on making these events more exciting - to create an environment that compliments the world's best and big egos and battles with it. Magnus Carlsen is the most prominent advocate for ‘freestyle chess,’ where the board is randomised to make the game more dynamic.

Striking this balance is a fascinating challenge, and now is the time to act. While they'll be concerned with the 'traditional' aspects of this 1,500-year-old game, going with the momentum will take a lot of courage and it'll be an interesting watch.

Luigi Mangione and the moral limits of the hot felon

To put it bluntly; the media loves attractive people, and it loves murder, so when the two come together it devolves into a frenzy where morals are left at the door.

This week’s obsession over Luigi Mangione, the lead suspect in the fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare in broad daylight on the streets of New York, is a prime example.

After an initial spree of “can I say something?” posts on social media, traditional media coverage of the probably murderer’s attractiveness have proliferated. One Telegraph article highlighted the contrast of a brutal murder and the public’s fascination with the shooter’s symmetrical face, eyebrows and six pack. Some social media users took as far as digging up the suspect’s old dating profiles.

From (found innocent) Amanda Knox to ‘hot felon’ and Annas Chapman and Sorokin, conventionally attractive criminals have always had a propensity to achieve a level of celebrity that in many cases creates a danger of trivialising the seriousness of their crimes.

Luigi Mangione stands as one of the most extreme examples of this phenomenon in the age of social media and meme culture, the fact that he is alleged to have fatally shot a man in broad daylight equivocated by his supposedly political motives as well as his looks; but when the media chatter and the memes subside, it will be interesting to observe if the ensuing moral reset will leave us with another celebrity ‘hot felon’ or just a murderer.

Lily Phillips: The Rewards and Pitfalls of modern fame

Lily Phillips, the OnlyFans creator who hit the headlines for sleeping with 101 men in 24 hours in October, was in the news again this week when a clip from her documentary I Slept With 100 Men in One Day showing the emotional toll of the stunt went viral.

Although arguably being quite brave when describing what some might assume was the devastating physical and mental toll of the feat, the clip in which a tearful Phillips grapples with the pressure to perform, and talks about disassociating is still a fitting allegory for the often dehumanising cost of modern fame.

But it’s also PR: coming from Phillips’ own documentary, the clip is clearly stage-managed for maximum emotional impact and the media coverage of it concluded that Phillips was steadfast in her bid to top her effort by sleeping with 1,000 men in a day.

So while on the surface it might be a searing indictment of modern celebrity, this was also a teaser designed to ramp up the hype and jeopardy for the next big stunt; a reminder that even those who know the cost still willingly, to paraphrase Richard Burton, swallow fame’s sweet poison in eager gulps.