Lewis Hamilton should be crowned the King of the “interesting” Public Relations stunt and when we use the word interesting, we don’t mean in the same sense as one of Stephen Fry’s pearls of wisdom, oh no, we mean interesting in the same sense as Eddie Jordan’s BBC wardrobe – i.e. iffy, odd, bizarre…you get the idea.

As reported by the trashy excuse for a morning paper – the Metro, an image of Lewis Hamilton has been created using oil from his McLaren Formula One car.  You can see the work in progess on the right – it’s clearly from 2008, with him having the classic hammy grin.

You’d have to agree that this is pretty bizarre, but what makes it utterly ridiculous is that this artwork was partly done to promote “National Check Your Oil Week” – now that just sounds insane and like something you’d read in one of our satirical pieces, but we can assure you it’s true this great event falls next week from June 15th – 19th.

There’s a website all about NCYOW which supplies us with some interesting stats such as 57% of us don’t check our oil regularly enough and that 17% don’t check it at all.  Blimey, now that is interesting.

This is up there, definitely in the Top 5 of Hamilton’s bizarre PR stunts.  These stunts have been few and far between this year with the young Brit having a break from the intense media attention he had in 2007 and 2008 – nothing short of a good thing, with the lad coming across ever more human and losing his McLaren inspired Robot-like persona.  His public appeal for fans not to give up on him after Sunday’s Turkish grand prix were heartfelt and real.  The Badger hopes he can have just one good race this year to keep the Lewis magic alive, as for the championship, he and McLaren may as well “do a Honda” and comeback in 2010 – whatever they do this season seems to be disastrous, Hamilton was overtaken by Nelson Piquet on Sunday – crikey.  (Nelson was on fine form though)

Anyway, if you were lucky enough to avoid the Metro this morning, here’s a copy of the article for you to enjoy.  The best news about this and the National Check Your Oil Week is the competitions…details below.

• Win an iPod by knowing something about oil : National Oil Week iPod Comp
• Win one of 50 prints of this painting with Mobil : Mobil 1 Lewis Looking Slick

In case you’ve missed it so far, this is the other cringe worthy bit of PR work Hamilton’s been involved in – promoting Hilton Hotels and telling us all about his “ride”

Lewis’ role of single-handedly ‘being’ F1 in the first two years of his career did little with there being a fine divide of people being either a fan of the chap or loathing him. Partly due to him arriving in the sport with the fastest car, but mainly due to him being the focus of mass media attention, more so that the rest of the 20 drivers put together.

Final thought : Lewis, get yourself a proper manager – fathers are great when you’re karting, but you need a pro at this level (see Daddy Button’s example) and don’t be afraid to turn down the PR stunts, they get you some pocket money, but you’ve got plenty already and they do nothing for your ‘image’