Comic reputation management – it’s all in the timing

It’s been some weekend for reputation management, allegations of bullying at number 10, Tiger Woods’ public self-flagellation, Ashley Cole and Vernon Kay’s errant texts – skeletons not so much falling out of cupboards as walking out of them into a TV studio and making full, boney confessions.

Tiger’s one on Friday was 3 months too late (and comically stage-managed). If he’d done it in December and got back to playing golf, he could have played the Accenture World Match Play this weekend, sponsorship deal intact. Instead he’s disappearing into extended penance – and more sex therapy (blimey, how bad is it) –  the image crisis defining him rather than he it.

Somehow it’s not a stretch to believe table thumping Gordon Brown could be difficult to work with, a man who’s bulldozed his way to the top job by hook and by crook, will have chewed up a lot of staff in his wake. It will now take more than a cosy Piers Morgan interview to convince the public he’s a nice guy.

Meanwhile, Vernon Kay must be thanking his family good fortune that Ashley Cole exists. While Kay apparently sent some inappropriate texts to women, in the same week, Cole reportedly sent PICTURES to his.

In reputation management as in life, timing is everything.