HERE at Trading Gossip Towers, our annual reviews are serious and sober things, conducted in an atmosphere of suitable solemnity in suites atop our palatial abode.

But at PR agency Paver Smith, perhaps unsurprisingly, they do things rather differently.

Earlier this month, the team at the high-flying firm, led by Dougal Paver, below, chose to host its six-monthly review at Liverpool’s swanky Hope Street Hotel.

The company’s website includes shots of the Paver team being entertained by directors Paver and Martyn Best and their flip charts.

But better was still to come.  As the website recounts, “Lunch followed at Sapporo restaurant, and the celebrations continued long into the evening.”

That sort of treatment could make anyone look forward to a corporate presentation.

WE AT Trading Gossip have never actually had a press release informing us that the Pope is Catholic or that bears do, occasionally, “go to the toilet” in the woods.

But sometimes, as PRs from throughout the known universe compete to sell us their wares, it feels as though such a release may be imminent.

This week’s treasure, if that’s the word, comes from the policy wonks at the Institute of Payroll Professionals (IPP). It’s titled simply “Employers urged to prepare for staff holidays.”

You have to feel sorry for the staff at the IPP if their bosses keep forgetting their staff are entitled to leave the office at least a couple of times a year.

YOU heard it here first: “We’ll all be working for ourselves in the future, you mark my words” . . . was the cheery prediction from a former wage slave now in the world of the self-employed encountered by Trading Gossip on Castle Street this week.

“Why, even the kids on the check-out at (leading discount supermarket) are even self- employed, paid ten quid an hour, and told to look after their own tax.” A sobering thought, indeed.