Amazing PR from the AA

Oil hits new high | | Guardian Unlimited Business

The article is about the fact that oil prices are approaching record highs. Towards the end of an article all about the economic reasons for high oil prices, we cut into an AA spokesperson talking about the possilbe oil hikes:

Paul Watters at the AA said that this week could see a new all-time high for petrol prices. At the moment competition between supermarkets is helping to hold back price rises, but this is unlikely to last.

What's Paul Watters got to do with anything? I suspect Ms Balakrishnan had a very nice lunch from someone from the AA's PR team. The article did not need to quote anyone at all to link high oil prices with possible high petrol prices. It's not like Paul Watters was quoted saying anything insightful.

Maybe he did have a full briefing session that included some very insightful thoughts about why high oil prices lead to high petrol prices. I doubt that they would need a quote from someone to inform people that high potato prices would lead to high chip prices.