Its £90,000-a-year (with performance-related pay, eds) Director of Communications, Paul

Like the old trouper he is, Riley admitted he had fallen asleep and suggested that fellow Echo scribe Katherine Jones, who was also at the premiere, should do the review instead.
Fair enough, you might think.
But oh no…
McGovern appeared on the Roger Phillips programme later that morning and was allowed to whitter on about Riley like a true luvvie for the best part of 20 minutes.
(Gosh, this is better than Corrie, isn’t it? eds)
Riley’s only offence, of course, had been to find McGovern’s play so interminably dull that he had dropped off. (A view which we also share, eds)
Meanwhile the snitch Newman, self-appointed guardian of journalistic ethics and moral arbiter for Liverpool, had fired off his ‘Riley’s a disgrace’ missive to McRae in a clear effort to get him sacked after 38 years unblemished service to the Echo (surely cause for a proper disciplinary investigation? eds)
Riley was duly suspended and appeared last week at a disciplinary hearing, the outcome of which we await with bated breath.
However…
(This is the good bit now, eds) We have some things to say about Mr Newman, (right) whose career in Liverpool has been distinguished by consistent incompetence, failure and invisibility.
(Oh goodie, eds)
The first is this: be very careful about making complaints about the personal behaviour of other people in a work-related situation. People in glass houses...
We are reasonably sure that your wife and family would not be at all happy if a complaint was made about your own personal behaviour in a work-related situation. Know what we mean?
(ermmm, we think so, eds)
Secondly, if you paid more attention to doing your job which the people of Liverpool are paying for through the nose, then you wouldn’t have time to fire off self-righteous, poisonous little missives to editors.
Thirdly, we are sure it has not been lost on our readers, that Mr Riley, for all his faults, has been one of the few local journalists to give your bosses at the £114million Culture Company and the city council, a difficult time.
You saw your chance to try and do Riley in and thus remove a thorn in your side, didn’t you rat-face? Well, we hope you are thwarted and that Mr Riley returns from a hopefully relaxing suspension to his desk, unbowed and undeterred.
And we hope Newman’s disgraceful role in this nasty little episode is not quickly forgotten by journalists on Merseyside and elsewhere.
(another cracker, we love it when he gets all angry, eds)