Chameleon PR

It is impossible to spend much time in tech PR without visiting Slough. After a decade or two of working for a London based technology PR agency, you know Paddington, Hayes & Harlington, West Drayton, Langley, Slough, Burnham, Taplow, Maidenhead, Twyford and Reading train stations like the back of your hand.

Training it up and down the UK’s M4 corridor (not quite such as sexy a moniker as “Silicon Valley”), you can’t help but get attached to places. Slough train station holds special affection, especially the platform 5; the one back to London. It’s not just the platform cafe that makes the platform vending machine seem like a Gordon Ramsey restaurant, it’s Station Jim.

Slough, a place so bad that it didn’t even quite top a survey of the UK’s most crap towns, has on its train station platform back to London a dead dog. A dead dog, stuffed in a glass box. That’s entertainment in Slough.

There’s a plaque that recalls Jim’s life, in a very Slough type way. Highlights include:

“The first trick taught him was to get over the stairs of the footbridge.”

“He started his duties as Canine Collector for the Great Western Railway Widows’ and Orphans’ Fund when he was about four months old but, because he was in bad health, he was only actually collecting about two years or so.”

“Yet he managed to place about £40 to the account of the Fund.”

“He only once had a piece of gold put in his box — a half sovereign.”

“There were only about five pieces of silver.”

“The majority of the coins he collected were pennies and halfpennies.”

“After a time he was taught to bark whenever he received a coin.”

“His railway journeys were few in number.”

“On one occasion he went to Leamington; that was his longest ride.”

Now perhaps it’s the Slough of Despond that the station inflicts on its commuters, but it seems that Station Jim was a dog that collected very little money during just two years of working, the majority of which was in small denominations, and he once went on a train to Leamington. Some of his main achievements included walking across a footbridge and barking which, for a dog, is not really a USP.

The final paragraph of Station Jim’s entry in Wikipedia reads:

The story of the Slough “Station Jim” is mentioned in the historical background feature accompanying the BBC movie Station Jim (2001). Although the movie involves an orphanage, the movie dog and storyline are not based on the true story, and the movie is not set in Slough.

So, Station Jim isn’t even the Station Jim in Station Jim. The orphanage made it in, put the eponymous dog didn’t. And nor did Slough.

Slough.

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