Tree falls, no one hears it

There was a rumour last week that Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra had been shedding tears at a public event again.

You'd think it would be more than a rumour seeing as the event was a meeting of the Economic Reporters Association, but no actual facts have been reported.

Yingluck was there to give a speech about the prospects for Thailand's gross domestic product this year, and if indeed she did end up crying, it might have been because hardly anyone came to hear what she had to say.

The association had told her staff that it expected 400 people to attend. They weren't even close. They were scrambling at the last minute to make the near-empty room at the Dusit Thani Hotel look sparsely populated. Even some of the event's sponsors declined to show up.

Yingluck later denied crying about it, but even if no tears were shed, certainly blame was apportioned. The fuming PM's Office wrote to the association asking for an explanation. The sheepish association wrote back to say it was sorry.

How it's done

Next time, the Economic Reporters Association should offer discounts on some nice merchandise. That's what the Emporium did the next day for the opening of a Dior boutique and the place was jammed.

The shop is 400 square metres and you couldn't move it was so crowded.

Actually, publicity director Warawut "Pop Dior" Laohapongchana, moonlighting from his job reading the entertainment news on Channel 3, didn't need any cut-price sales to draw a mob.

"I put a lot of effort into Dior and all of my work has to be examined and approved by the Dior office in Hong Kong," Warawut has previously said. Well, they must have liked the way he harvested his showbiz connections.

He managed to bring together seven top celebrities from various TV channels, a rarity for openings like this. Nadej Kukimiya, Ann Thongprasom, Patcharapa "Aum" Chaichua and Pakorn "Dome" Lam were among the stars pulling in shoppers for Dior.