In conversation with... Paul Mylrea

There can’t be many in PR who can say they’ve been shot at several times and almost blown up earlier in their career, before steering TfL’s press office through one of their most difficult times after the 7/7 bombings.

That’s before you touch on stints as director of public affairs at the BBC during the Jimmy Savile crisis and latterly director of communications at Cambridge University, where he broke the news of grime star Stormzy’s ground-breaking scholarship scheme for Black UK students.

But then there’s no one quite like former CIPR president and Fellow Paul Mylrea, who’s also worked at senior level in the government and the not-for-profit sectors, including roles at Oxfam.

Like many in PR, Paul, 67, started out as a journalist, learning his trade on local newspapers before working for Reuters. He spent two decades with them until 2002, reporting from more than 30 countries around the world including Germany, Luxembourg, Brazil and Peru, before returning as UK political correspondent.

Now after more than two decades in PR, he’s sharing some fascinating insights with Influence magazine.

Paul first dipped his toe into the world after leaving Reuters to join Oxfam as head of media, where he was charged with developing the charity’s profile as a campaigning organisation on issues such as Fair Trade, with Paul explaining: “I thought communications would fit my skills and always wanted to work for organisations I believed in that were contributing to society.”

But he never thought he’d use skills learned working in dangerous situations for Reuters – until a year into his job heading up media relations at TfL, when terrorists struck the capital.

Paul elaborates: “Bizarrely, we’d done a planning exercise for such an event just before. But my 20 years as a foreign correspondent taught me your plans don’t survive the first shot of battle. I’d already been in very difficult situations, with places and people being blown up. The only way is to get through it – you can suffer later. Your job is to be completely calm, focused and to do what you have to do. Because if you don’t, you’re letting your team down. They all volunteered to support the TfL staff but it was incredibly difficult for them.”

He followed TfL with a hard three years as director of communications for the Department for International Development, covering aid during global disasters. After that, he decided he’d done enough tough jobs and became director of communications at the BBC in 2010.

However, he’s reluctant to talk about his three and a half years there, saying only: “Let’s put it this way, there were some pretty brutal investigations.”

After the BBC, he went to Cambridge University – “a wonderful place”. However, his time there was not without tragedy, when two alumni volunteers Saskia Jones, 23, and Jack Merritt, 25, were killed by a terrorist at a university event at London’s Fishmongers’ Hall in 2019. “Having moved to a place I thought would be nice and quiet, it was anything but quiet,” he muses.

Then he was struck with Covid at the start of the pandemic, followed by two strokes. After falling ill in March 2020, his daughter, a doctor, became concerned with his breathing and insisted he go to hospital ­– before he knew it, he was on a ventilator.

Paul continues: “I have no memory for two weeks. During that time, they thought I was recovering from Covid, but then I had a stroke in April, then another. I was incredibly lucky I survived because at first, the consultant rang my wife and told her I wasn’t going to make it. I swim in cold water at Hampstead ponds all year round and I reckon that’s what saved me.”

He’s had time since to reflect on what PR means, along with his time with CIPR, including a year as president in 2011 ­– and that it’s anything but fluffy because at its heart, it’s about people, problems, communication and crisis management. “I love CIPR’s efforts to maintain PR as a respected, professional career and to insist on doing the right things,” he says. “PR has a terrible reputation. But I would argue more than 90% of that is due to people who are not members of the CIPR, who don’t accept professional ways of working.”

“The people I respected were those who, when asked to do things that they didn’t feel were right, refused to do so. In organisations that get it right, the PR person is integral to decision-making and should be listened to when they’re saying no, you can’t or shouldn’t  communicate something. One time, I was lied to about something I was communicating. And that really upsets me still.”

Paul feels PR faces more challenges than ever: “People dismiss PRs as not telling the truth because they’ve read something on Instagram. You can’t correct everything on social, it’s like swatting flies. Plus, traditional press has suffered because of the growth of social media, so it’s harder to get the truth out there, and institutions simply aren’t putting the resources into the amount of PR they need.”

However, he insists: “PR is more important than ever and it’s a great career” ­– and one he’d loved to have continued.

He’d planned to return to consultancy and pro bono charity work after recovering from his illnesses, but after-effects mean he’s now been ordered by doctors to retire.

He concludes: “I was very lucky to escape the bomb all those years ago in Peru. After that, I thought I was going to live forever but the thing that almost got me was Covid.”

Whether or not his survival from that was down to cold water swimming, we should be grateful that Paul took the plunge into PR – in more ways than one, he’s one of the sector’s great survivors.