How can you interview a shopping festival?

People in the UAE take their shopping very seriously, and shopping festivals – particularly the one that just passed in Dubai – get a lot more press than you would think.

So I was killing myself when I read this hilarious take on an Arabic daily's interview with the Dubai Shopping Festival itself over at the brilliant blog Fake Plastic Souks. Maybe I just liked it because it reminded me of the embarassment that was the time I was forced to do a phoner with the children's character Barney (who, in an interesting side note, seems to be called Jim Jam here. Any parents care to illuminate that for me?)

While you're at Fake Plastic Souks – you'll want to bookmark and return often – I would also read the sound advice given to all the people who work in communications in this country (stemming from the murky-seeming closing of the Burj Khalifa earlier this month for "maintenance").

Well done.