Toughest job in the world then. President of the USA? A brain surgeon? A crocodile’s dental hygienist? Piers Morgan’s dietician?

All unquestionably daunting occupations but, in the last 12 months, they’ve been surpassed by one career path, one that would make even the most capable blanch. It’s a vocation requiring nerves of steel.

It attracts the steel-willed. Its finest exponents possess a steely constitution, primarily due to a prodigious weekly alcohol intake caused by excessive ‘networking’. Some are called ‘Daniel’ or ‘Danielle’, which would almost certainly make them ‘Steely Dan’ if I continued to labour this tediously metallic motif.

I can proudly say I understand what makes these übermenschen tick. I can empathise with those facing daily challenges so Olympian, Sir Chris Hoy would hold his hand up and admit, “All the Bran Flakes in the world couldn’t get me through this job.’

I empathise because I am one of them.  I am PR.

Some PRs, however, are more super than others – ones who take on the accounts that others fear. They’re the professional world’s equivalent of the A-Team, except they is getting on no plane, sucker (after all, a PR always loves an international jolly). They’re the ones who sleep with one eye open, firmly fixed on the inevitable early-morning trill of the office smartphone.

And it is they I honour today, by selecting what I imagine are the five most challenging PR accounts of 2012.

Let’s start local. Bushy and unbushy eyebrows were raised when local media reported on an open day at the Mac to discuss plans for the former Pitmaston building in Moseley. One of the better PR agencies in the region, WPR, had been appointed to steer the community consultation element.

The Church of Scientology owns the landmark building. That’s the kind of brief that takes a brave agency – an agency tasked with reaching out to a local community bemused by an empty mansion on their doorstep, and a wider community that associates Scientology with couch-leaping superstars and secretive practices.

All very challenging and should be interesting to see the results.

From one church to another, we have the Church of England. In terms of the vote that generated the most headlines in the past week or so, the bishop-bashing of women’s equal rights was way ahead of the PCC farce (though remained a creditable second to Christopher Maloney’s continued mandate to croon The X-Factor into ignominy).

The communications team for the CofE had a thankless task: religion often struggles to gain headlines for positive reasons, so once the vote was announced, all hell inevitably broke loose (please forgive me for the sins of that pun).

The initial communications put out by the CofE was sober and reflective, but was rendered redundant by the significance of a decision made in 2012 but ethically originated from another era.

Maybe it was too reflective – the vote, after all, showed it was actually a majority that voted for women bishops but the consecration was held back by one powerful faction.

It’ll be a tough ask to rebuild the CofE’s credibility in the forthcoming months – some strong proactive media relations work is certainly needed, along with a dash of divine intervention.

From one august institution to another: the BBC has had the most bi-polar of years imaginable. If Sky had delivered the London Olympics as well as the BBC, there would be advertising billboards the size of the moon telling us so.

The Jubilee Concert was so impressively staged, it didn’t feature Emeli Sande. Chris Moyles was no longer on Radio One breakfast. All was right in the world.

Well, apart from the Thames Pageant coverage, subject to tabloid hysteria inexplicably hinting that this parade represented the final omen for the BBC. Fools. They only had to wait five months for a genuine jingle-jangling harbinger of doom.

Working in the Beeb’s communications team must be exhausting: one eye on a slavering media craving to see a giant brought to its knees, one eye on its well-paid stars and their human (and inhuman) foibles, one eye on its labyrinthine management structure and another eye on the fact it has to have more than two eyes.

Another entity that has snatched notoriety from the jaws of success was Chelsea Football Club.

Remember the days everyone used to call them ‘Chelski’ and the greatest criticism you could file against them was that they were loaded? Halcyon times for their press office. These days, they’re less popular than rickets.

Obviously, nobody expects a footballing behemoth to be as likeable as Peppa Pig. But, unlike Peppa Pig, Chelsea won the Champions League in 2012 (I believe Peppa, a perennial underperformer, was knocked out in the qualifying rounds).

Chelsea’s efforts delighted fans and Roman Abramovich, a man of such inexpressive countenance, he makes Mona Lisa look like Lee Evans. This, surely, provided enough goodwill to get through Autumn?

Not a bit of it. Chelsea embarked on a catastrophically bad run of bad PR: John Terry; Ashley Cole’s truculent Twitter contretemps; the Mark Clattenburg/John Obi Mikel contretemps; John Terry; the trigger-happy dismissal of a popular manager; the fan-baiting appointment of an unpopular manager; John Terry; Chelsea fans booing their new manager before he sat down for his first match; John Terry.

The list John Terry is almost John Terry endless John Terry.

Manning the press office for Chelsea can only be like repeatedly bashing your funnybone. Every. Single. Day.

Finally, returning to the Midlands, there is Birmingham City Council, which at one point was matching the BBC in uncomplimentary headlines. There’ll be no criticism here of the council’s communications team, which appears to be much improved from the days of issuing leaflets of Birmingham featuring pictures of Birmingham, Alabama.

Certainly, it’s very difficult to positively spin a £757 million payout for equal pay settlements, nor the preceding revelation that £600 million had to be taken out of the council’s budget by 2017.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the councillors behaved themselves… except you then had the unnecessarily daft story materialising of Councillor Steve Bedser writing to Ofcom about Helen Flanagan’s frequent smoking on ITV’s ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here’.

I suppose raising awareness of Flanagan glamourising cigarettes made a change from mass media’s glamourisation of Flanagan’s cleavage, but still…

So that’s five PR accounts from the past 12 months that would give narcoleptics sleepless nights.

Who’d be a PR, eh? Wait a minute…

Keith Gabriel is a Birmingham-based public relations expert