- Bishop Hill blog

From the comments at Climate Audit:

““We don’t advertise a lot of the things we do,” says Edwards, who was called in by the University of East Anglia when Climategate blew up. “That was really interesting. It’s very high level, and you’re very much in the background on that sort of thing.”

The university’s Climatic Research Unit wanted Outside to fire back some shots on the scientists’ behalf after leaked emails from the unit gave climate change skeptics ammunition and led to an avalanche of negative press about whether global warming was a real possibility.

“They came to us and said, `We have a huge problem – we are being completely knocked apart in the press,’” says Sam Bowen. “They needed someone with heavyweight contacts who could come in…”

This morning the Managing Director of the Outside Organisation was Former News of the World executive editor Neil Wallis (he’s not MD any longer), Neil Wallis was deputy to Andy Coulson at News of the World. Andy Coulson until recently worked for the Prime Minster David Cameron.

Andy Coulson was arrested a few days ago, Neil Wallis was arrested this morning.

Update on Jul 14, 2011 by

Bishop Hill

The full MusicWeek article about the Outside Organisation is here. There's not much more about Wallis, apart from a few paragraphs confirming that he headed the UEA project:

The role of Neil Wallis, formerly editor of The People, deputy editor of The Sun and, most recently, executive editor of the News Of The World, is to lend heavy-hitting tabloid expertise, leading some jobs, following Edwards on others.

“Most of my career has been spent working at the top end of tabloid newspapers, so I know how they work and how they think,” says Wallis. “This is not that different, actually. You have very creative people, you have fastmoving situations, you have to think on your feet.”

Wallis led on the University of East Anglia “climategate” job, when Outside was drafted in to help the university’s Climatic Research Unit defend itself against charges of scientific misconduct.