Part 3
Interviewer: OK, welcome back to the programme. Well, for the hundred thousand or more people in London who buy every issue, Time Out is an invaluable guide to what’s going on in the city. In its lists they can find everything from films, plays, concerts and nightclubs to exhibitions, sports, opera, dance and special events. And I’m talking now to Tony Elliott, the man who started it all, back in 1968. Tony, what gave you the idea?
Tony: Well, back then it was very hard to find out about those things. There were magazines; there was a magazine called What’s On, which was a weekly, which is still around – rather, kind of, conventional in its approach, and you could look in the evening paper or you could look in the music press, uhm, to get information, but nothing covered everything all in one place [15]. So I perceived there was a gap and I suppose to some extent I just produced a magazine for myself, and it turned out a lot of other people wanted the same thing.
Interviewer: At first, the magazine was just a sheet sold hand to hand in the street, wasn’t it?
Tony: Well, I started with a few like-minded people and we did actually put it into newsagents – people do seem to think we started as a bunch of idealistic amateurs, but I have to say that I think we were actually pretty professional from day one. It was coming out every three weeks so I’d spend three or four days actually going round something like three hundred newsagents. The selling in the street was partly to do with getting copies sold so that we actually had some cash, but it also had this kind of in-built market research thing where you’d show people what you were doing and they’d go, ‘Oh really’ – and a lot of people said, ‘Oh, that’s a modern What’s On, that’s what we’ve been looking for.’
Interviewer: So, did you have any publishing experience before this?
Tony: Hmm, I did a regular column for a magazine at university which was quite serious. It used to do single themes per issue, like provincial theatre or education or racialism, and then when I took it over I promptly changed it into being a kind of contemporary arts magazine [16]. We did interviews with artists, rock stars, writers, people like that.
Interviewer: Were you still at university when you started Time Out?
Tony: Yeah, technically I was actually on holiday for the summer vacation, and as far as the university was concerned, I was supposed to be going to France to teach. I think I’d told them I would do, because, you know, you go away for a term or a year if you’re studying French, and uhm, then I started doing the magazine.
Interviewer: And, er, didn’t go back.
Tony: Yes, well, there was a point when I suddenly realised that I was doing what I wanted to do [17].
Interviewer: So it soon took off, didn’t it? I mean, it was monthly first and then it went weekly, didn’t it, in a very short time?
Tony: Well, it started monthly and then we went three-weekly – for some reason that was the highest frequency we could do. Then we went fortnightly, which is quite a valid frequency for publication, and then inevitably we went weekly – stimulated, I have to say, by the threat of some competition from some people who were starting a similar publication [18].
Interviewer: Oh, yes, I was going to say, someone else must have spotted the gap. I mean you identified it, but there must have been big publishing houses who thought, ‘Hang on, we can have some of this too.’
Tony: I think the truth is nobody really realised what the significance of the magazine was, ’cause in a sense it started very tiny, very small, and then built up and built up and a lot of publishers and a lot of advertisers also were very, uhm, dismissive of our readers. I mean, still, even today, you get occasional accusations like, ‘It’s not a particularly significant readership’ and ‘A lot of students read it, don’t they? [19]’, things like that. People just didn’t realise that, uhm, that we were creating a readership that was very significant.
Interviewer: The readership’s grown up with you as well, hasn’t it? A lot of people, I imagine, who were buying it as students in the sixties are now buying it as parents of teenage children these days.
Tony: That would imply our readership’s now older, which isn’t the case. And although the numbers have expanded, well it’s true that there are more people over thirty-five buying it than there were when it started. The readership hasn’t really changed [20]; it’s still basically intelligent young people who do things.
Interviewer: OK, well, we’ll take a quick break now and then I’ll be back to talk to Tony some more…
Part 4
Speaker 1: So the Head of Department called me in and launched into this long speech about how my messing up the arrangements for his meeting had created all sorts of trouble for him [21]. While he was going on about it, I glanced at the bit of paper in front of him and I saw the signature and I realised it hadn’t been me. I knew it wasn’t like me anyway. I mean, I get things wrong but only trivial things. It’s going to be hilarious when he realises what a fool he’s made of himself [26]. I doubt I’ll be able to keep a straight face.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was busy and the Area Manager turned up. Well, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to see him; it’s hardly ever good news [22]. Anyway, he wanted me to start on some other project. I’d been warned that was coming so I didn’t have much trouble coming up with reasons for turning it down. He said I’d regret it later but I said I didn’t think so, and he left it at that. The thing is, after all these years with the firm, all I get asked to do are the things no one else fancies. It’s really got me down – I joined with such high hopes and now I’m so disheartened, it’s such a shame [27].
Speaker 3: The ridiculous thing is, I’d always known she couldn’t be trusted, but it’s in my nature, I guess, to speak my mind. Still, I shouldn’t have confided in her what I really thought of the job. It’s just that when she asked me, it caught me unawares. It’s got me into a lot of trouble now [23], because of course she’s spread it round everyone else. I should just laugh it off, but that’s easier said than done. She’d better not come near me for a while, the way I feel I’d give her a piece of my mind. It infuriates me [28] when people do that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Jack came to my office today – we used to get on really well till they moved him upstairs and I hardly see him now – and he said, ‘Hey, there’s an opening in our office now. I’ve fixed it so you can have it.’ Well, I didn’t know what to say – it came right out of the blue [24]. I mean, he’s always done me favours and been kind to me but I can’t think of anything worse than working there. So I feel awful about letting him down after all he’s done for me [29], but I’m going to turn it down because it’s my career, isn’t it?
Speaker 5: Well, I tried to be my usual tactful self but he took offence. ‘So you can’t bear to come on this trip with me?’ he asked and I said, ‘If s not that, if s just that I’ve been to so many conferences lately, I want a break from them.’ And he said, ‘But this is the most important of the lot – don’t be so stupid.’ If I’d reacted to that, we’d have had an enormous row, so I didn’t bother [25]. That’s the sort of thing that tends to happen with him. He’s either all over you or he can’t stand you. That’s just the way it is – I won’t let it bother me, what would be the point? There’s nothing I can do about it [30].
Click to download this CAE Listening Test in PDF