Terry Prone: Ireland loves a good downfall if the fallen has got a big personality

The downfall isn’t seen as a once-off but as an exemplar: an indication of a wider, longer-standing problem.

PR man Declan Kelly: The story is complicated by the fact that he was, effectively, working at this event.

When the story of Declan Kelly misbehaving drunkenly at a fundraiser involving stars such as Beyoncé emerged on Thursday, I was asked by media outlets how I’d advise him in this crisis. It’s not that complicated, because Kelly’s offence was unilateral. It wasn’t entangled with a client’s interests and therefore he can take corrective action all on his own.

The concentric circles model applies. Whoever is most directly offended goes in the first circle — in this instance, the people he misbehaved towards. Next circle might be the organisers of the event. Outside that circle, his colleagues and staff. But, I hear you say, what about his family? That’s the great thing about the concentric circles model I developed to help address crises; it causes corporate and individual heart-searching and establishes the real values of an individual or company. It also delays action, which is good in a crisis because immediate action tends to be thoughtless and instinctive — consider the initial response to his own misbehaviour of the UK’s Minister for Health, which more or less justified Boris Johnson’s earlier profane view of Matt Hancock.