Posts Tagged ‘Famous Features’
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011
By Sally Windsor, joint Company Director.
You heard me right! Famous Features press agency is now both the largest and fastest growing press agency in the UK. With 11 brilliant reporters and two talented photographers, boasting a massive 10,000 contacts on our database – it’s impossible for us not to feel the need to gloat just a little.
Since begging our business four years again, my business partner Oliver McAninch and I have created eight websites under the Famous Features brand, set up a PR facility and moved into new premises THREE times to cope with our ever-increasing workforce.
Not to mention our success rate of our talented trainee reporters getting jobs within the national media. With Famous Features reporters heading up key roles in women’s weekly and glossy magazines, and national newspapers – our alumni is stretching far and wide, making the brand name ever bigger in the industry.
Just today, new Junior Reporter Patrick Gysin and Senior Reporter Jenny Francis have double-page spreads in both The Sun and The Mirror, with other massive shows in this week’s weekly magazines.
We’ve come a long way from Ollie in his geeky bedroom at his parent’s house in Bath, building our first website, and me feeding my baby, (who’s not a baby anymore), pureed mush whilst making phone calls to prospective interviewees from my kitchen in Hove!
And we intend to become even more of a force to be reckoned with in the next 12 months with some groundbreaking plans to bring the world of the press agency even more into the 21st century than we already have – so watch this blog space… and don’t forget, that if you want the best deal for your real-life story and cash before Christmas – get in touch on 0845 83 88 555.
Wednesday, 26th October 2011
Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
URGENT STORY REQUESTS – GET PAID TO BE IN THE PRESS
The following people are urgently needed for magazine and newspaper articles. You will be paid to appear in a magazine or newspaper story. See the list below and visit: www.FamousFeatures.co.uk to tell us if you can help us with any of these real life stories or features. Send us your details by filling in our online form (located at www.FamousFeatures.co.uk ).
Also – please get in touch if you have any other stories that you would like us to consider. We are looking for new story ideas every day. Your real life experiences and true stories could earn you cash; sell a story today.
What better way to earn extra cash for Christmas!
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Person or Story Wanted: A gritty real life story occurring at a party. We’re looking for a real life story with a gritty edge set in a party. It could be any kind of party but with a dramatic event attached to it eg. a punch up, stabbing, shocking announcement etc.
Wanted by: National women’s magazine.
Person or Story Wanted: Need a couple where boyfriend thinks his girlfriend dresses way too s£xily and would like to make over his missus for just one day. The pair would need to be named and photographed for a light-hearted feature in a newspaper. They would also need to be able to come to London for a shoot.
Wanted by: Daily National Newspaper.
Person or Story Wanted: Have you got friendly with someone at work to get your way to the top? If so, we’d like to hear from you. Maybe getting close to a colleague, or even your boss has landed you your dream job? Or got you to places you never would have got to otherwise.
Wanted by: Glossy Weekly Magazine.
Person or Story Wanted: Jealousy drove me mad! We have a girl who hid her boyfriend’s passport to stop him going on a stag do and another who hired a private detective to stalk him, so we need something else to complete our article.
Wanted by: Glossy Weekly Magazine.
Person or Story Wanted: We are looking for couples who have funny disputes or funny issues they can’t stop arguing about for a new TV show. In addition we are looking for people who have large collections which are taking over their house; people who have decorated their homes in a very unusual manner; people who are obsessed with their animals; people who let their animals run all over the house; or anyone with a funny obsession of any kind.
Wanted by: TV company.
Person or Story Wanted: Teenagers or very young people getting married for a documentary about teens who tie the knot.
Wanted by: UK Television channel.
Person or Story Wanted: Looking for parents who manage their kids career in either the entertainment business or sport. We are casting for a BBC3 series with the working title Managed by My Mum.
Wanted by: TV Production company.
Person or Story Wanted: A woman aged between 20-45 who will be willing to talk openly and frankly about her s£x life. We are looking for a woman who has just come out of a long-term relationship (within the last two months) and is willing to keep a diary for a week about their s£x life. She will need to be really open and frank about her sex patterns/thoughts/actions across the week. She can be anonymous if necessary.
Wanted by: Glossy Magazine.
Person or Story Wanted: We are looking for a strong human interest story that could make a national newspaper spread this weekend.
Wanted by: Leading Sunday Newspaper.
Person or Story Wanted: A young family living on benefits that would write a weekly diary about how they cope financially.
Wanted by: Daily National Newspaper.
Person or Story Wanted: Mothers of young adults who are about to remarry inappropriately – perhaps a partner who is younger/older/diff sex/nationality.
Wanted by: Sunday Newspaper Magazine Supplement.
Person or Story Wanted: Women who had to drastically cut short their maternity leave because of financial worries. Report piece on the rise in numbers of new mums who have been forced to take just weeks instead of months off with their baby because of the current economic crisis.
Wanted by: Sunday Newspaper Magazine Supplement.
Person or Story Wanted: Person 18-40 who has had a negative experience taking part in drug trials.
Wanted by: Glossy Weekly Magazine.
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Please get in touch if you think you could help with one of these magazine or newspaper stories. We will pay you for your participation, so visit www.FamousFeatures.co.uk today and fill out our online form. If you would like to sell a story that isn’t on the above list, just let us know; we are looking for all kinds of stories.
Tuesday, 9th November 2010
Friday, September 17th, 2010
URGENT STORY REQUESTS – EARN CASH NOW
Stories are urgently needed. You will be paid to appear in a magazine or newspaper story.
Just visit www.FamousFeatures.co.uk to tell us if you would like to get paid to be in any of these real life stories or features. Send us your details by filling in our online form (located at www.FamousFeatures.co.uk ).
Also – please get in touch if you have any other stories that you would like us to consider. We are looking for new story ideas every day. Your real life experiences and true stories could earn you cash; sell a story today.
————–
Story or Person Wanted: Someone who broke free of the benefits trap.
Where the Story or Article will Appear: National Newspaper Story.
Info: We are urgently looking for someone who grew up in a family on benefits but has managed to break free of the benefits trap and really make something of their life. Perhaps growing up in that environment actually made them determined not to follow the same route themselves. This is a positive piece to show that even without hard working role models around you as a child you can still break away from all that and make a better life for yourself.
Criteria: Male or female aged 18 or over.
Story or Person Wanted: Man with a visible health condition – who is looking for a cure.
Where the Story or Article will Appear: BBC TV programme.
Info: We are urgently looking for a man with a visible health condition who would like treatment from a leading doctor. He might have seen a few doctors already and has been unable to get to the bottom of his problem. It is for a new BBC programme.
Criteria: Male, with visible health condition.
Story or Person Wanted: Christmas stories please.
Where the Story or Article will Appear: Woman’s Magazine Story.
Info: We are ideally looking for strong Christmas stories that touch upon how the recession has impacted families and the way they’ve had to downsize festivities. Anything particularly heartbreaking – not medical – or uplifting very much welcome.
Criteria: Mostly after mums aged 30-50 but am open to hearing ideas!
Story or Person Wanted: Halloween and Bonfire stories.
Where the Story or Article will Appear: Woman’s Magazine Article.
Info: We are looking for a spooky story to use for Halloween and a Bonfire/Guy Fawkes one.
Criteria: Ideally female, but they can be talking about their partner or children.
Story or Person Wanted: a woman who has been told a shocking secret by a family member.
Where the Story or Article will Appear: Glossy Women’s Magazine Story.
Info: The secret could be that her mother had an eating disorder when she was younger; a parent had been in prison; a parent had had an affair; a sibling/half sibling had been born and adopted; had a family member been married before; was somebody close illiterate, family member had an addiction etc etc.
Criteria: women need to be between 30-55.
Story or Person Wanted: The family of a victim whose offender is due for release or has been released.
Where the Story or Article will Appear: Women’s magazine story.
Info: We’re doing a feature on sentencing and are looking for the family of a victim who are unhappy with the jail sentence the offender got, because they are due for release (to serve the rest of their time on license) or have been released. The person who speaks needs to be female and the victim can be male or female. It doesn’t matter when the crime happened, but the offender needs to have been charged and was released within the last year or is due to be released in the next few months. They will need to be pictured and a payment will be made.
Criteria: The family member needs to be female (mum, sister or partner) and can be any age from 20 to 55. The victim can be male or female and any age.
Story or Person Wanted: A woman/couple who bought sperm over the internet.
Where the Story or Article will Appear: National Daily Newspaper Story.
Info: We are trying to find someone who bought sperm over the internet to talk about what happened, what their experience was etc. This includes women who bought sperm then changed their mind about using it. We would also be interested to speak to a man who sold sperm over the internet, or who was a sperm donor, or went down the route then changed his mind.
Criteria: None.
Story or Person Wanted: Victims of Botox cowboys.
Where the Story or Article will Appear: Women’s Magazine Story.
Info: A new study says that one in 20 women who have botox in the UK suffer complications thanks to Botox cowboys. We are looking for a case study who has had a horrific experience as a result of using a dodgy Botox doctor.
Criteria: Need to be female and have strong before and after photos.
Story or Person Wanted: Party changed my life.
Where the Story or Article will Appear: Glossy Women’s Magazine.
Info: We are looking for case studies for a piece on ‘The party that changed my life’. Examples are:
I met my husband after being single for eight years;
I met my future business partner;
I changed career – and became a party planner/amazing DJ or somesuch;
I met my long lost brother;
I had an accident and was paralysed;
I hit rock bottom – and rose to the surface.
Criteria: Women aged 18-35.
Story or Person Wanted: A lapdancer who went to university and has a degree.
Where the Story or Article will Appear: Women’s Magazine Article.
Info: We are looking for a girl who works as a lap dancer in a club but also has a degree.
Criteria: Female – needs to have proof of degree and be happy to do a shoot.
Story or Person Wanted: Girl to tell us how she tamed her man, or how she couldn’t!
Where the Story or Article will Appear: Women’s weekly – glossy magazine story.
Info: We’re looking for someone who’s tamed her boyfriend to become a one-woman man. And someone else to tell us how she tried to do that, and failed. Criteria: 20-30 years old, female.
Story or Person Wanted: A severely overweight woman who claims she is too fat too work.
Where the Story or Article will Appear: Glossy Women’s Magazine.
Info: We’re looking for someone willing to admit that they are too fat to work and unwilling to seek employment for an article debating whether being overweight does limit your job opportunities or is just an excuse for laziness.
We’d also like to find an overweight woman earnestly seeking work who has been turned down for jobs because of her size, and an overweight woman who is gainfully employed and thinks being big should not be an excuse for unemployment.
Criteria: Participants should be aged 18-45, and female.
Story or Person Wanted: A crime story about a woman aged mid 30s to mid 50s.
Where the Story or Article will Appear: Weekly Women’s Magazine.
Info: We are looking for crime stories – it could be something along the lines of a woman who turned her life around after her husband tried to kill her, or it could be a heartbreaking murder story. Or it could be a woman’s desperate hunt to find her loved-one’s killer.
Criteria: The woman needs to be mid 30s to 40s, and identified.
Story or Person Wanted: Teen who has suffered a large number of STDs.
Where the Story or Article will Appear: Glossy magazine.
Info: The girl (or maybe boy) would need to be willing to speak openly and be identified and pictured. They will be paid for their participation.
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Please get in touch if you think you could help with one of these magazine or newspaper stories. We will pay you for your participation, so visit www.FamousFeatures.co.uk today and fill out our online form.
If you would like to sell a story that isn’t on the above list, just let us know, we are looking for all kinds of stories.
Friday, 17th September 2010
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
Alex McGowan finishes her journalist training at Famous Features and heads to News of the World to start a job on the features desk as part of the Robert Warren Scholarship.
We would like to wish Alex all the best and thank her for her dedication, great copy, roving-reporterness, and for being an all round great gal!
Good luck Alex!!!
Alex McGowan leaves Famous Features to take up a position within News of the World's Features Team
Tuesday, 7th September 2010
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
WHO WOULD BE A WOMAN?
By Alexandra McGowan for Famous Features
Don’t get me wrong, there are a number of incredibly wonderful things about being a woman. We are able to carry children, multi-task, and spend a month’s salary on shoes without wasting time on silly emotions like guilt.
I think all of the above are pretty special!
However, there are times when being a woman is downright lousy – for a number of reasons.
One of them materialises once a month, every month…for most of our adult lives. The dreaded…PMT (for any males, or women fortunate enough not to know what this is, it’s pre-menstrual tension). It’s caused by an imbalance of hormones at the onset of a period, and usually lasts for a few days.
Most women get a bit down, use it as an excuse to pig out on chocolate, then carry on as normal. But some women have to stay locked away in darkened rooms, such is the madness that comes upon them with the ‘monthly miseries’.
For too long, people have sneered at sufferers of PMT as being over-dramatic, or slightly unstable mentally. But it’s not true. If your body is affected by hormonal changes, there is nothing you can do about it…except sit tight and ride the storm.
We’re interested in real life cases of severe PMT. Did it break up your marriage? Did you find yourself nearly snapping (verbally and perhaps even physically) at your children one day, because you were so irrational and upset?
If anyone understands what you’re going through, it’s other women, which is who we would love you to share your story with in one of the national magazines or newspapers. You will be paid a great fee for sharing your story – and maybe it will reach out to someone else who has been affected in the same way you have.
So please get in touch with one of the Famous Features team today by emailing your story to sell-my-story@famousfeatures.co.uk, or call our hotline: 0845 83 88 55
Friday, April 23rd, 2010
Meet our new FamousFeatures staff writer – Lorna Gray
‘First Day Jitters’
Starting a new job can be pretty daunting so I was feeling suitably nervous when I began my first week as staff reporter at Famous Features last Monday. Now I’ve worked a variety of jobs in my time. In my late teens I worked at a garden centre and a chip shop – neither of which agreed my nails but I enjoyed them nonetheless. So no horror stories there. Unless you count getting slapped with a bit of haddock or having to dress up as an elf at Christmas…
During university, I worked at a popular high street clothes shop – heaven for me but don’t think my bank balance would agree. Then I entered the wondrous world of journalism. I can safely say – every day is a new learning experience and an adventure in this line of work. So it’s best to keep your wits about you at all times unless you want to look like a prize tool.
And the editors? Trust me – the ladies I’ve worked under mean business (one work experience boy went out at lunch and didn’t come back because he was so scared of one particularly scary news editor). But I have a feeling this is going to be different. I’ve reached the end of my first week relatively unscathed (apart from the awful impersonations of my Scottish accent!). And I’m not fearful of getting hit by fish or having an embarrassing uniform forced upon me…not yet anyway.
Here at Famous Features, we’d love to hear about things that have happened to you in your workplace. Have you got any horror stories you’d like to tell? Whether it be an affair with your boss or wars at the water-cooler – we want to hear about it! Tell us and get your story into print!
Monday, April 19th, 2010
If you’d told me a few years ago I’d be running the London Marathon for a second time this year, I would’ve checked your temperature to make sure you weren’t ill.
Me?
Run?
I don’t think so!
I’ve always liked to keep fit, but only with light-hearted forms of exercise – swimming, dancing, aerobics, nothing too hardcore, thank you very much.
The agonising cross-country sessions at school, where I trailed behind at the back, struggling to breath, had pretty much scarred me for life.
Or so I thought.
When my dad and his brother – my uncle Pete, were both diagnosed with cancer within a week of each other, I was terrified.
My dad’s was in his kidney. They removed the organ and the nasty disease with it.
But Pete wasn’t so lucky. He had bowel cancer. He fought it with such strength for a long time. But then it finally got the better of him and he died.
It was around this time I figured I needed to do something to acknowledge the good work of Cancer Research UK – who had saved my dad and done their best for Pete.
The Cancer Research UK Race For Life was being held in a park near my home – I knew it would be a massive challenge – but that’s what fundraising is all about, isn’t it?
Well, my first training run was a disaster – I actually didn’t make it to the end of the road before I collapsed in a heap.
The shame!
But I kept at it – I’m a stubborn one about most things, which always helps.
I started run/walking, and soon enough I was cutting out the walking bit.
I completed the run with my stepmum and had a fantastic day – the atmosphere was amazing.
I know it’s a leap, but from there I decided I needed to do the marathon – to really show my appreciation to Cancer Research UK and raise them some cash.
Whenever the training runs got hard, I thought of my dad and Pete and it was enough to keep me going.
I made it round in five hours last year, and this year I’m back for more.
Illness and an ankle problem mean I haven’t done as much training as I should’ve done, and I know it will be really hard on the day – but that’s when I’ll think of my dad and Pete, and let my stubborn side take over – I WILL make it round again, even if I have to crawl!
Here at Famous Features, we’d love to hear about things that have inspired you do so something; have you lost a loved one and done something in their memory? Tell us about it and get your story into print! We’ll always donate to your charity too if you’d like us to, so get in touch!
