WHAT a public relations disaster the demolition of Didcot Power Station’s cooling towers has become.

Not content with scheduling the big bang for a ludicrously unsocial hour next Sunday morning, the whole saga lurched even further into farce yesterday.

In a wonderful example of lousy communication and coordination, viewing stations were being prepared for people to witness the end of an era just as the demolition contractors, apparently backed by RWE npower, told people to stay away.

The reason? The contractors say people might get dust in their eyes once the towers are blown. Hardly the bubonic plague, is it?

Tower blocks, chimneys and a variety of other buildings have been cheerfully blown up all over the country for many years, with thousands watching in an organised and safe way.

But not here. The churls and the jobsworths have hijacked this much-anticipated event and not even a petition with several thousand signatures and the intervention of MP Ed Vaizey and other local politicians will sway them.

The firm makes great play of being a ‘part of the community’.

The main event may be more than a week away, but npower have already pushed the self-destruct button on that particular myth with their clumsy, insensitive handling of this whole affair.

This company should have secured a stunning PR triumph from the demolition.

Instead it has snatched an embarrrassing defeat from the jaws of victory.