Yesterday the luvvies at the UK Film Council quango were summoned by Ed Vaizey to answer claims they had misused resources to promote their own survival rather than the interests of the British movie industry. The suspicion at the DCMS is that they were running a scaremongering spin operation drawing in the likes of Clint Eastwood and billionaire film producer Steven Spielberg to write publicly demanding the British taxpayer subsidises their movies.

A UK Film Council spin-doctor yesterday denied the allegations, piously intoning that: “The future of the UK film industry is the only thing the UK Film Council is interested in.” Unfortunately PR Week had already gone to press before Vaizey had voiced his suspicion that the luvvies were using public resources to promote their own interests, rather than those of the film industry. In PR Week Oliver Rawlins, the film quango’s head spinner boasted that he had

“been handling a comms strategy relying on third-party advocacy… We’ve ensured that the message has been simple, clear and consistent: this is a terrible decision that disregards the commercial benefits of the UK Film Council…”

Which rather undermines the quango’s subsequent claim that they weren’t spinning to save their own necks…