'Sleep starts at the beginning of the night'

By now you have probably heard or read about hotel chain Holiday Inn offering a human bed-warming service.

This is obviously a daft (if effective) PR stunt so I won't dwell on it too much, but I would like to look at a particular quote that has appeared in a lot of the coverage around this story. The quote, attributed to Dr Chris Idzikowski of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, is as follows:

There's plenty of scientific evidence to show that sleep starts at the beginning of the night when body temperature starts to drop. A warm bed - approximately 20 to 24 Celsius - is a good way to start this process whereas a cold bed would inhibit sleep.

"There's plenty of scientific evidence to show that sleep starts at the beginning of the night" - what exactly does this mean? If by 'night' we generally mean the time that we are asleep, then yes, sleep does usually start at the beginning of the night.

Here are a selection of sites using the quote or a version of it:

• Caterersearch: Holiday Inn introduces human bed warmers

• Metro: Hotel firm offers human bed warmers

• Reuters: Human "bed-warmers" at Holiday Inn

Names: Mr Conman

We've blogged before about silly names, but today a press release came through at work written by a Mr Conman. Although I assume this name doesn't have a stress on the final syllable, unlike the word 'conman', it is still amusingly appropriate for someone who works in PR...

PR speak

Spotted in a press release by one of the writers in our care before it reached the engine room: "Vehicle maintenance can be a headache for small businessmen and women." Funny, you'd think vertically challenged businessmen, or women, would be less likely to bang their heads when crawling beneath vehicles than their taller colleagues.

The PR person responsible for this howler can almost be forgiven – if a business is run by a businessman (or woman) then a small business...

What's more worrying to those of us trying to hold the line against a tide of sloppy usage is that the release came from a large company, which presumably employs large PR people, and certainly has a large PR team. Someone should have noticed.

But spare a thought for the PR person, of whatever size, who sent in a release from an oil company which described the author of a report as the "heavy duty marketing manager". Yes, it's logical that the person in charge of marketing lubrication products for heavy-duty vehicles should be called the heavy duty marketing manager. But we wonder what the woman who holds that post thinks of her job title?

We flipped her job title to refer to her as the marketing manager for heavy-duty lubricants and hope her bosses take the hint.