My friend and former Hill & Knowlton colleague Rod Cartwright has recently jumped ship to Ketchum, where he’s heading up their Public Affairs offering. Nice career move and, given some of Ketchum’s client list, I hope we’ll see each other in Moscow before too long.

Rod needs to blog.

Rod’s an experienced PR / Public Affairs practitioner whose experience is well worth tapping into. He’s also one of those people who’s often talking and, when he is, it’s generally worth listening. Would have been an excellent teacher in another life, one of those ones you could sidetrack onto pretty much any topic, but who still managed to instill knowledge without your even realising. Scarcely a day would go by at H&K without Rod uttering the phrase “Jimmy B, tell me what you think about this …” – and then we were off.

An industry stalwart and vocal advocate for the Public Affairs profession, Rod was on telly the other week giving evidence before the House of Commons Public Administration Committee as part of their lobbying enquiry – and did alright, too. He’s written all manner of articles, reviews and so on for various exalted organs of the mass (and not-so-mass) media. Get him in a pitch and you can light the blue touch-paper, sit back and watch Rod impress your potential client. We can all learn from Rod.

But that’s not why I want him to blog. Or at least not the whole reason.

Rod-isms.

Rod is blessed with a particularly eloquent turn of phrase and, every now and then (and generally several times a day by tea-time) he’s come out with one of those pearls of wisdom that you just have to file away and keep for future reference. Think Saint and Greavesie rolled into one, or perhaps Murray Walker. Maybe Jeremy Paxman when he’s really on form. Even Donald Rumsfeld.

Sadly most of the Rod-isms I can remember, involving, as they do, clients named Richard or Marcus’s expert mastery of the Cox Review, aren’t fit for printing in what is, after all, a U-rated blog. So I’ll content myself with just one:

Well that was an interesting pitch. We’ve either definitely won it, or we definitely haven’t …

… which doesn’t really illustrate the full breadth of wisdom, innuendo and sarcasm which Rod is capable of cramming into one short phrase or sentence.

Rod, if you’re reading this, please start blogging. If you do, I’ll change that picture.