'A fantastical, violent and very funny portrayal of a world obsessed by reality TV and the "bloated bankers, Russian roubles, salacious socialites and filthy footballers" that rule over it - rings with intense personal experience'
Asylum.co.uk
'Tomas has cult written all over it. It's slick, cool, funny and very readable. If you're sat on a beach, wanting to flick through something that will make you laugh a bit, think a bit, and that has a smattering of violence and sex, it's ideal. There are hints of American Psycho and the collected works of Hunter S Thompson, with the surreality and metaphor cranked up.'
TheBookBag
'Palumbo's imagination is certainly very twisted and hilarious throughout the book and makes for interesting, entertaining reading. The writing and ideas are certainly original and go a long way to setting Palumbo up as an inventive new writer.'
Chewthefat.com
'A timely book that sets out to chronicle some of the more sordid aspects of the age in which we are living.'
Creative Review
'Picking up the literary baton of monomaniacal money lust, Tomas drips with disdain for the cancer of economic excess. Palumbo's first foray in to the world of words is a surreal, searingly critical search for a new messiah in a near-distant future.'
Dazed Digital
'Dark, violent and grimly humorous, this a story of a man sickened by greed and the unhealthy infatuation with all things celebrity. It is well written … as contemporary as can be.'
Fantasy Book Review
'Caustic satire on wanton consumerism.'
GQ Magazine
'A debut novel that explodes af full blast ... Palumbo delivers a savage satire of the highest calibre.'
Monocle
'A snorting, wide-ranging, surreal satire set in the future which lampoons the vulgarity of a craven celebrity culture fed by reality TV, and businessmen genuflecting before Russian oligarchs ... Tomas, a satire that mixes fantastical imagery and the dislocation you find in J.G. Ballard.'
The Times, Saturday Magazine
'It's as if Thomas Pynchon and Burroughs and Vonnegut got together and had a bastard love child.'
'A snorting, wide-ranging, surreal satire set in the future which lampoons the vulgarity of a craven celebrity culture fed by reality TV, and businessmen genuflecting before Russian oligarchs ... Tomas, a satire that mixes fantastical imagery and the dislocation you find in J.G. Ballard.'
'Control is, above all, his opium, so it's ironic to think he made his fortune out of people losing themselves to trance music.'
'James Palumbo, the founder of London's Ministry of Sound club, has just published his first novel, Tomas.'
'There was a bang, a puff of smoke and ... nothing. I lost all my money.'
'I do most of my deals, and most of my writing on the sofa.'
'A debut novel that explodes at full blast ... Palumbo delivers a savage satire of the highest calibre.'
'With celebrity endorsements from Stephen Fry and Noel Fielding, the gritty satire by the Ministry of Sound founder has had more advance publicity than almost any debut novel, ever. But is it any good? Niall Ferguson thinks so. "Rabelais meets Tom Wolfe," he calls it.'
'My bulletproof jacket was useless. He was a few feet away and could shoot me in the head.'
'Deep down I probably despise money.'
'What you do, or do not take from this book will depend heavily on your own beliefs and thoughts. This is Palumbo's debut novel and there are glimpses of a special talent that will hopefully bloom in later works.'
'Everything got big during the boom; oligarch's boats, glamour girls' breasts and bankers' bonuses.'
'Picking up the literary baton of monomaniacal money lust, Tomas drips with distain for the cancer of economic excess. Palumbo's first foray in to the world of words is a surreal, searingly critical search for a new messiah in a near-distant future.'
'The more sordid aspects of the age in which we are living.'
'Palumbo's imagination is certainly very twisted and hilarious throughout the book and makes for interesting, entertaining reading. The writing and ideas are certainly original and go a long way to setting Palumbo up as an inventive new writer.'
'Tomas has cult written all over it. There are hints of American Psycho and the collected works of Hunter S Thompson, with the surreality and metaphor cranked up.'
'Do I want to wreak havoc in a club with a sub machine gun? Probably not.'
'There is no end to the exhaustively extravagant ways the rich have devised to publicly dispose of their cash.'
'A world so grotesquely decadent it might be considered comical, if it wasn't for the fact it so closely resembles our own.'
'James Palumbo’s first novel is a scathing attack on celebrity and reality television.'
' In the footsteps if F Scott Fitzgerald, Jay McInerney and JG Ballard’s Super-Cannes.'
'Absolutely amazing ... it's the most energetic and surreal and extraordinary novel I have read for a very long time ... it's really remarkable'
Stephen Fry
'In TOMAS Rabelais meets Tom Wolfe. Palumbo's surrealist satire of the Age of Eurotrash is a grotesque as it is gripping.'
Niall Ferguson
'The noises I made whilst reading this book frightened people on the train.'
Noel Fielding
'Either mad or genius or both!'
Rory Bremner
'Bizarre, intriguing, funny and superbly written ... more please!'
James Herbert
'It's as if Thomas Pynchon and Burroughs and Vonnegut got together and had a bastard love child.'
Stephen Fry
'A wild, weird, brilliantly inventive fable of our times - I loved it, should be on the long list for the Man-Booker prize.'
Peter James
'It's unlike anything I've read in a long time. And that's a good thing. I loved it.'
Claudia Winkleman
'Comedy so black you need night vision goggles. A tour de farce.'
Kathy Lette
'The style is a mix of the surrealism of Salvador Dali and some of the savagery of Hunter S. Thompson.'
Jeff Randall, Sky News
'A world so grotesquely decadent it might be considered comical, if it wasn't for the fact it so closely resembles our own.'
3AM Magazine
'A book of furious, surreal satire of a colourful kind. It's wonderful to read this kind of book; I think it's a marvelous surprise from an unlikely source.'
Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry Review
The Times
July 4th 2009
The Ministry of Sound founder James Palumbo: a lone wolf
By Simon Hills
James Palumbo turned his club Ministry of Sound into a global business empire, but with his aesthete's lifestyle and aversion to debt, he couldn't be further from the image of the hedonistic tycoon. Now, as he embarks on a new career as a satirical novelist, he talks for the first time about money, ambition and his long-running rift with his father
James Palumbo's Kensington flat is about as far removed as you can imagine from the Ministry of Sound super-club that made his name and fortune.
The large, double-aspect drawing room is dominated by a grand piano, two huge contemporary sofas, and, on the walls, a series of beguiling watercolours from the 1780s by François-Joseph Bélanger, designer for Marie Antoinette. It is to the Ministry what the Royal Opera House is to Anfield.
Palumbo, 46, pads across to a fridge hidden by a panel in the wall to produce bottles of Evian, his every step tracked by Mr Bounce, his blue whippet, who all the while growls quietly until we're seated and he can take his place curled up beside his master.
At first glance, with its calm beauty and precision, the apartment chimes nicely with Palumbo's reputation as a man who's renowned for being distant, cool and ruthless in his business dealings. There is none of the paraphernalia of daily life to be seen - no newspapers, books, stray remote controls - and if you want further evidence of the Bond-style control freak as sometimes depicted on the business pages, Mr Bounce completes a perfect cameo.
James Palumbo: There's only money, sex - and music and mellowing
Writing his first novel was more fun than any of the takeovers he's negotiated, says the uncompromising founder of Ministry of Sound. Matthew Bell meets James Palumbo
James Palumbo is explaining how he used to torment his housemaster at Eton when a tiny mouse darts under the giant brown loaf of a sofa I'm perched on, my feet dangling off the edge like a child's. We're in the 46-year-old multimillionaire's sleek first-floor apartment in South Kensington, so swanky that metal walls come crashing down if there's a fire and secret panels slide back to reveal hidden fridges. There's none of the usual domestic detritus such as telly guides or Biros, and you certainly don't expect to see a rodent. Palumbo is slack-jawed with amazement: "There's a mouse. In my flat. Amazing. You must have brought it with you."
I hope he doesn't also think it's my fault if reports of how he operates as a businessman are accurate. Those who have had dealings with the founder of the Ministry of Sound nightclub describe him variously as ruthless and intimidating, while at school he was so feared that even now people turn white at the mention of his name. There's certainly something of the Bond villain about him as he settles down with his haughty blue whippet, Mr Bounce, and fixes me with empty black eyes.
On weekdays I read the Times - Matthew Parris is my favourite journalist. Sunday is the Sunday Times and the Telegraph, both brilliant, especially Liam Halligan's doom and gloom business editorials in the latter. The London Evening Standard is great, particularly Chris Blackhurst. The Daily Mail when flying as I'm terrified - its horror stories anaesthetise my fear.
Magazines
I don't buy any but flick through Hello! and OK! once a fortnight at the hairdressers. Their awfulness cheers me up. Also GQ's incredible pictorials but not the predictable writing.
The chairman of the Ministry of Sound and music brands Hed Kandi, Global Underground and Euphoria says he despises money
James Palumbo is best known as the founder of the Ministry of Sound nightclub, rebranded as MSHK Group in 2008 to reflect the purchase of music brands Hed Kandi, Global Underground and Euphoria. He ranks 406 in this year's Sunday Times Rich List, and is estimated to be worth £130m.
From humble beginnings in a former derelict bus garage in Elephant and Castle, south London, MSHK is now a global dance music lifestyle brand and the largest independent record company in the world.
Palumbo, 46, is the eldest son of Lord Palumbo, the property developer against whom he fought, and won, a bitter six-year court case over the running of a family trust fund. He grew up at Buckhurst Park, Windsor — now the UK home of the King of Jordan — and was educated at Eton and Oxford.
His first novel, Tomas, was published by Quartet Books last week. He lives in London and has one son, Alessandro, 18. He has never married.
How much money do you have in your wallet?
I don't like wallets — the idea, size, weight and stealability of them. I do carry some cash around with me day-to-day, but I would have no idea how much.
James Palumbo, 46, co-founded the Ministry of Sound club in south London 18 years ago. Since then the brand has grown into a multi-million-pound business.
Palumbo, who lives in London and is estimated to be worth £130 million, recently published his first novel, Tomas, a satire about money, greed and reality television.
Mornings I get up at six o'clock because in my new life as a writer, that is the best time to think and write. Since I have moved on from running my different businesses I slouch around at home instead of rushing in for breakfast meetings. I do most of my deals, and most of my writing on the sofa.
Music Someone gave me a recording of Daniel Barenboim playing Beethoven's Moonlight sonata when I was seven. From then on I have been fanatical about classical music. I am meant to say that I also like the records that my music company produces, and it's true that in some trance tracks you can hear JS Bach chords, but the fact of the matter is I am passionate about Beethoven, Italian opera and Tchaikovsky ballets.
The Ministry Banking people like me used to put our money into clubs or wine bars or restaurants, basically hoping to meet girls. I had no idea about running a nightclub and everything that comes with it, like violence and drunkenness and drugs. The Ministry of Sound was an extreme risk because it was in south London, it didn't open until midnight and it had no drinks licence, so people were expected to turn up and drink water. It had all the ingredients for failure, but it was so extreme and so unusual that it actually crossed the dividing line between failure and success.
A debut novel that explodes at full blast: Tomas tears apart the world of the rich on his crusade againist everything that's wrong with the 21st century, including fat bankers and reality TV. Palumbo delivers a savage satire of the highest calibre.
GQ
August 2009
Tomas
James Palumbo
Ministry of Sound founder Palumbo's caustic satire on wanton consumerism takes aim at the more undesirable nightclub clientele - big-spending Russians and champagne-spraying Eurotrash.
Mail on Sunday
June 28th 2009
How I risked my life kicking the drug gangs out of my club, by Ministry of Sound boss James Palumbo
By James Palumbo
An entrepreneur with close links to Peter Mandelson today reveals how Class A drugs worth more than £50,000 used to be sold in his London nightclub each weekend.
Writing exclusively in The Mail on Sunday's Review section, James Palumbo says that after opening the Ministry of Sound in 1991, he routinely went to work there wearing a bulletproof jacket, and carrying spray gas and a stun gun to defend himself from gun-toting dealers.
Palumbo, a 46-year-old multi-millionaire and the Old Etonian son of property tycoon Lord Palumbo, recounts several close shaves with gangsters, who for a time seized control of the club.
He writes: 'At the height of its popularity, Ecstasy sold for £15 a pop and some clubbers took two, three or even four pills in one session.
'The drug profits were astronomical - I estimated they totalled more than £50,000 a weekend. I was trying to run a legitimate business in an atmosphere of lawlessness and intimidation.' He salvaged the club after tackling the dealers head-on with the help of the police. He later boasted it was the 'only drug-free club in Britain'.
Palumbo retains a majority stake in the business, which has clubs in London, Egypt and Malaysia and was named Britain's 406th wealthiest person with a £130million fortune.
James Palumbo: dance-club millionaire turned satirical novelist
In the glory days of the Ministry of Sound, the club's mercurial founder was usually to be found in a glass cube office peering down at his youthful workforce. James Palumbo was always a remote figure, says The Independent on Sunday. It would be hard to find a more unlikely dance club boss. He combined an aesthete's love of fine wine and classical music with a reputation for ruthless business dealings, inspiring either devotion or loathing. "He'd make a good Bond villain," noted an associate at the time. "The chilly, clever loner who wants to take over the world."
On most measures, Palumbo has succeeded. Having transformed a derelict former bus garage in Elephant and Castle into "an urban dance cathedral", he has built the Ministry (renamed MSHK last year) into what he claims is the world's largest independent record firm, turning over £80m last year. But the business (now 18 years old) has had its ups and downs. Most notably a planned £150m stockmarket flotation a few years back was hastily scrapped. But it has since rebounded, despite rivals claiming dance music and the Ministry were finished. Palumbo, who sold a 16% stake to 3i for £25m in 2001, now takes a back-seat from the daily running of the company. His personal fortune is around £130m.
A book that is recommended by figures as respected as Stephen Fry, Noel Fielding and James Herbert has a lot to live up to. Tomas is one such book and James Palumbo's satirical take on modern-day excess will polarise opinions.
Some will find it banal, others enlightening; it is unlikely that two people will share the same reading experience. Bankers and footballer's will be horrified by their professions portrayal while the working-class hero may find that there is much of his disgust at the modern world mirrored in Palumbo's writing. What you do, or do not take from this book will depend heavily on your own beliefs and thoughts.
Often dark, violent and grimly humorous, this a story of a man sickened by greed and the unhealthy infatuation with all things celebrity. It is well written, though sometimes a little heavy-handed on the metaphor. The story is as contemporary as can be, bearing in mind the current financial climate the UK finds itself in and it will be interesting to see how well it reads in ten years time.
When an author uses surrealism to tell their story they find that the boundaries are pushed back. However, these boundaries are still very much in place and it is important that they are observed less the story become simply bewildering. Palumbo keeps within these limits and as such Tomas never becomes ridiculous and at times is extremely thought-provoking.
Mainframe has animated three virals to promote Tomas, a novel by Ministry of Sound co-founder James Palumbo about moral corruption and the credit crunch. The virals - Champagne Jungle, Hank and Cocks Away - animate the novel's macabre illustrations in a dark, shocking way.
Mainframe has created this series of virals to accompany the release of James Palumbo's debut novel Tomas, a timely book that sets out to chronicle some of the more sordid aspects of the age in which we are living (and as a co-founder of the Ministry of Sound this is a subject that presumably Palumbo knows well).
Champagne Fuelled Jungle
"Bloated bankers, Russian roubles, salacious socialites and filthy footballers: this is the meaning of life in the new millennium," explains the website promoting the book, tomas-book.com. "Controlling it all is SHIT TV, the ultimate reality channel, which dares to put homicidal dwarves on rollerblades and obese mamas in tutus. Reluctant celebrity Tomas has had enough. Armed with a Tommy gun and a revolver, he sets out to teach the world a lesson and becomes a Messiah in the process."
The book is illustrated by a series of drawings by Neal Murren, which bring some of its debauched scenes to life, and these form the basis of the viral films by Mainframe. "The artwork in the first place was great, really detailed and dark imagery," says Mainframe director and animator Mark Warrington. "It was great to work with such a strange subject."
'I can guarantee this will be the only piece of financial scrutiny you will read that will feature Napoleon, a floatating-rotating alien and an army of soldiers dressed in a uniform fashioned in the shape of a giant penis and ball-sack.'
I always prefer word of mouth recommendations in life. Raw, uncensored and highly subjective views directly from the heart often lead me to investigate books, music or films that I would otherwise never consume. Keeping open ears and an open mind is always useful in expanding your knowledge, enjoyment and points of cultural reference and helps to dampen the temptation to renew your subscription to 'Andy McNab Monthly'.
Such is the way with modern society, this book came highly recommend (via numerous technological paths) not by a real life friend but by the ever present Stephen Fry. Seemingly more of a genuine recommendation then a gleaming celebrity endorsement, 'Tomas' mainly caught my ear due to the mention of its author, James Palumbo.
Palumbo's name will be recognisable to any dance music fan of the Nineties as the driving force behind the Ministry Of Sound club and its many later brand extensions. His Dad is a Lord; he was educated at Eton and Oxford and is seemingly very 'old money'. This made the book all the more interesting a prospect as a property tycoon and business entrepreneur is not the first person you would look towards to create an innovative piece of satirical fiction.
Tomas has had enough of the unthinking excess and greed of modern society. He despises the men declaring themselves film producers to impress women wheeling around their breasts on trolleys. So he kills them. The chief of police doesn't pay much attention until he makes his favourite hotel disappear, obviously.
Tomas has cult written all over it. It's slick, cool, funny and very readable. If you're sat on a beach, wanting to flick through something that will make you laugh a bit, think a bit, and that has a smattering of violence and sex, it's ideal. There are hints of American Psycho and the collected works of Hunter S Thompson, with the surreality and metaphor cranked up.
James Palumbo's debut novel takes potshots at all the unpleasant and shallow aspects of life. When his satire has a broad target, it's usually excellent. The jokes and ideas are very strong - I particularly laughed at the newspaper's front cover about a celebrity's knickers, and the editor's attempts to tie other stories to them. When the satire is narrower, it lacks the necessary viciousness. If you say that I'm A Celebrity is a bit rubbish, the audience says "Yes. And?" It needs to be a knife under the ribs. It needs to make people's jaws drop.
In 1991, James Palumbo co-founded the Ministry of Sound club in south London.
Over the past 18 years, the brand has grown into the multi-million pound business MSHK, encompassing a record label, radio and TV stations and a soon-to-be-released fashion label.
Now Palumbo has turned his hand to being an author.
His first novel, Tomas, is a biting satire in which the reluctant star of an absurdly low-brow reality TV show goes on a killing spree, mowing down the grotesque patrons of an exclusive club in the French Riviera.
In the ensuing media frenzy, Tomas becomes a messianic figure, enlisting the help of a beautiful prostitute, an elderly judge, an alcoholic journalist, a spherical alien and the Emperor Napoleon.
After a brief career in banking, the founding of a successful club and managing the MSHK brand, why write your first novel now? Was it a burning desire of yours?
The answer's no and whenever any one says to you, "I'm writing a book," you think, "oh, don't you have anything else to do?"
I had no plan to write a book, no ideas, no characters and no plot. But I was sitting in my comfortable chair at home and literally years of stuff to do with business and how people behave around money came splurting out in a totally unfashioned manner.
It makes me think that the thing doesn't deserve to do well because it wasn't beautifully crafted or a well-thought-through book.
But at least if it doesn't do well, it won't do well authentically and not because it was planned.
Kitchens, like hospitals, are essential. The colours, the tiling, the trusty cooker, the fridge - maybe with an automatic ice dispenser. Then there are the accoutrements. Oh, the accoutrements! Pots and pans, ceramic mugs, giant salad bowls, the coffee machine, electric things. Tableware all matching, reassuringly expensive when bought. All symbols of your success…
This is TOMAS, the much-hyped debut novel from Ministry of Sound founder James Palumbo. Specifically, the passage is from 'The Sermon on the Tower', when Palumbo's eponymous anti-hero addresses his millions of fans / followers from atop an inverted Eiffel Tower, having survived death by firing squad and been resurrected as the new Messiah. On the brink of war, with Russia's Great Bear, symbolic of capitalism at its most vulgar and inhumane, facing Tomas and his alternative world order, this surreal soliloquy on the latent dangers of apathy coupled with affluence perfectly captures a novel that is at once temporal and fantastical, satirising our obsession with wealth - desiring it, accumulating it, flaunting it - by creating a world so grotesquely decadent it might be considered comical, if it wasn't for the fact it so closely resembles our own.
James Palumbo’s first novel is a scathing attack on celebrity and reality television. His messiah figure, Tomas, starts off as the murderous scourge of the selfish and unthinking, and ends as the saviour of the West from a conspiracy of bankers, media moguls and _ the real enemies – Russia and Iran. His ghostly mentor is Napoleon, and he is assisted by an all-powerful alien: his closest confidante is a beautiful woman called Tereza with the particular honesty that whoredom, apparently, lends. Some of his enemies, and some of his closest allies, are not strictly human.
Palumbo is fascinated by the possibilities of the beast fable. Like other satirists before him, he has realized that one of the easiest ways to make one’s targets disgusting is simply to smear them. Thus, the media network busily rotting the Western mind from within is called Shit TV, and much of its output, including the reality-television shows that have driven Tomas to his fury, involve eating excrement or bathing in it. Palumbo relies heavily on the reader’s instinctive reaction to this. He does not make us experience much beyond the intrinsic disgust uniform that consists of a giant penis with two vast sacs of weaponry attached – and the pun between Cossacks and Cocksacks is immediately made. The breasts have to be carried around on trollies; Neal Murren’s illustrations helpfully give us a visual referent for this. One of the villains has a vast stomach which can be detached and which, at one point, successfully stands in for him in the course of a business deal. All of this is intended as symbolism of false consciousness, no doubt, but Palumbo too often ends up trading in what he deprecates.
The novel also shows a consistent obsession with distorted or severed body parts. Tomas threatens various male villains with castration, wither by having their genitals chomped by maddened pigs or having them surgically subjected to irreversible removal. The Russian armies have to visit a future where their work is done, when the oligarchs and celebrities are gone and the world is quiet and calm. An enlarged Paris is full of long avenues and elegant buildings. It is a tidy world, where the Chinese have tidied Africa for its own good, and where well-intentioned nepotism has replaced the croneyism of robber barons. Throughout the book, people are seen as passive observers of their own corruption or salvation.
There is a power to some of this – the descriptions of the berserk fury of the Bear, who is the secret master of Russia, and an account of a footballers’ orgy. There are occasional outbreaks of subtlety – the mechanism whereby virtuous Judge Reynard engineers Tomas’ messiah-hood. Overall, however, the satiric edge of James Palumbo’s novel is weakened by the unvarying use of a broad brush.
The Evening Standard
July 23rd 2009
Fat Bankers and a Dose of Fantasy
Olivia Cole
James Palumbo’s novel Tomas is set in a world dedicated to “the worship of money” and consequently to “depravity of every hue and colour”. Obviously, it couldn’t be more timely. From his first business venture – the Etonian Butler Service developed in LA when he was not long out of school – to founding Ministry of Sound, to his later career as a baker, Palumbo has had more than enough experience, I would assume, to write a whole shelf of books on this subject.
In a world controlled by oligarchs so fat they nearly take down their yachts with them, Tomas is surrounded by idiots, spraying champagne on the Cote d’Azur, amid girls you can buy as easily as jeroboam. His misadventures lead from Cannes to Paris and back again, via the film festival, fantasies of moral vengeance and a job as reality TV anchor for the choicely named channel, Shit TV.
Is it a revelation that in Cannes all guys pretend to be producers and that wannabe actresses form a queue to get “produced”? Possibly not, but you can’t help but like his addition to the lexicon with his word for these creatures – “produces”.
Just as his creator, Tomas is a kind of visionary revealing grim truths (sex in his world is always a transaction – “the most succulent fruits on the aphrodisiac tree are power and money”), Palumbo’s fans, too, will give him the sage’s tag.
There’s one snag. It’s unlucky that in the time between writing and publication, some of Palumbo’s invented horrors have already happened: death on reality TV and bankers behaving like pigs. The political observations work best: for instance, the President’s sexual prerogatives chime pleasingly with real-life Mediterranean party-boy Berlusconi. Here the satire feels in the minute but in the case of financial greed, given the amount we already know about backers and their bonuses, his observations hardly feel revelatory.
The novel concludes with one scene so touchingly written that suddenly felt short-changed by the comic storm presented for most of the novel. For a monstrous 21st century take on “the rich are different” – in the footsteps if F Scott Fitzgerald, Jay McInerney and JG Ballard’s Super-Cannes – you can’t help feeling that a purely satirical novel isn’t quite enough. The visions of Tomas are a fantasia – I half wish Palumbo would turn his hand to telling it like it really is.
'History may judge the current batch of shows as the not-so-innocent forebears of a return to the spectacle of the Roman arena.'
'I am going to be dead in 35, 40 years - who the f*** cares?'
'Writing a book is more revealing about oneself than walking nude down the street.'
'I like imagination, I like fantasy, and satire flows from that absurd situation.'
'Set in a wonderful futuristic world in which a new star is discovered, the end is imminent and one hero sets out to save the day.'
'There’s quite a lot of the grotesque in Tancredi.'
'People are so venal and lazy they’d just sacrifice having children for food.'
'Short and sharp, the book is a Candide-like sci-fi allegory.'
Rating 8.5/10 Thought-provoking satire which will leave you open mouthed.
The Times
September 22nd 2011
X Factor will not make you the next Beyoncé
By James Palumbo
It’s a cruel illusion to sell stardom to karaoke crooners - and bruise widows along the way.
Red or Black?, ITV’s latest Saturday night offering, where contestants guess which colour a roulette ball will land on, plumbs new depths of mindlessness in British prime-time television. It requires no talent, intelligence or strength of character, just the ability to speak a one-syllable word. And the prize for a lucky guess? It’s £1 million.
Defenders of the programme point to its popularity to silence all criticism. The same argument could be used in support of junk food, but we all still know that it’s bad for us. The more we become addicted to a diet of backsides in Big Brother and bug-eating in I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!, the worse the programmes get.
Given the near-religious fervour generated by these shows, it seems an apostasy to examine one show with a critical eye. The 16 million people who watch The X Factor can’t be wrong. As someone involved in the music business via my Ministry of Sound label, the show is of special interest to me. The arguments in its favour are well known: it gives people a shot at musical stardom, finds new talent and is harmless fun for all the family.
The first two arguments are fallacious. Judges should be banned from exclaiming: "You’re the next credible vocalist to come out of the UK", "I’m convinced you’ve got a long career ahead of you", and "That performance was world-class".
In the programme’s eight seasons the only artist to have enjoyed global success is Leona Lewis, whose first album sold seven million copies. Her second sold one million. It’s likely that her third will be her last. Why? Because she doesn’t write her own songs or lyrics. She has no ability to express her life and feelings through music. She’s 26 and her career will soon be over.
Compare this with the singers Adele or Example on the Ministry of Sound label. These artists care passionately about music, through which they express their emotions and experiences. As musicians they have integrity, a personality, an attitude. This is altogether different from a good karaoke impression of a Whitney Houston hit, instantly disposable and forgettable.
And this is what happens to X Factor contestants — a few months of glory followed by a brief career crooning in clubs and coffee shops, then oblivion. Steve Brookstein, the 2004 winner, now spends his life on the blogosphere warning would-be contestants of fake promises and false expectations.
Such is the power of the show, world-class artists such as Beyoncé and Robbie Williams are sucked into its prime-time vortex. They shed years of accumulated integrity to perform cringeworthy duets with aspiring hopefuls, bestowing upon them the status of potential peers. This makes the subsequent collapse of their dreams that much more painful.
Pain is an important part of the show. The viewing millions thrill to the ritual humiliation of its contestants. It seems that the spectacle of watching someone being flayed alive has never gone out of fashion. In last week’s show Ceri Rees, a fragile and confused 54-year-old widow from Bridgend in South Wales, was wheeled out on stage to be mocked by the baying crowd. As she warbled her way through her song the audience broke into hysterical laughter while looks of practised incredulity flashed across the judges’ faces. This was followed by the verdict — short, nasty and rehearsed.
The taste for pain on prime-time television is manifesting itself in ever more disgusting degrees. In Embarrassing Bodies patients allow themselves to be poked and prodded by a caring doctor. Then there is a plethora of the fattest this, thinnest that, and girl-with-two-heads the other, all posing as hard-luck stories. Again these programmes offer the opportunity for stardom. Having a television crew film an intimate medical procedure allows for 15 minutes of fame — which extends to half an hour if something goes wrong.
The effect of these shows on young people can’t be entirely harmless. In the case of music, why sweat through years of gigging in dingy basements when you can appear on Saturday night TV? Kids don’t understand the ephemeral nature of the dream being sold. They want to be up on stage seeking Simon Cowell’s benediction. And if this isn’t forthcoming, his put-down still gives them their moment in the sun.
Where will it all end? Although we gave up stocks and gallows several centuries ago, there seems to be a growing demand for uncivilised and violent entertainment. Jackass-type TV is about brutality. Feature films have depicted a future in which people are addicted to gruesome gladiatorial games performed live on network television. History may judge the current batch of shows as the not-so-innocent forebears of a return to the spectacle of the Roman arena.
James Palumbo is chairman of Ministry of Sound Group. Tancredi, his satire on greed and excess, is published next week
The Evening Standard
September 23rd 2011
James and his giant reach
By Rosamund Urwin
He's a political maverick, the £150 million global boss of the Ministry of Sound and part of a feuding Establishment family. James Palumbo talks about funding the Lib-Dems, fatherhood and his new satirical novel.
This week Nick Clegg probably needs every friend he can get. But multi-millionaire James Palumbo - the Ministry of Sound mastermind turned satire writer - would feature high up on any party leaders' dream supporter list.
The 48-year-old, who has just published his second novel, initially describes himself to me as "apolitical": he has friends of all hues (including Peter Mandelson and Simon Hughes) and has given financial support to all three main parties. But he now admits he has "nailed [his] colours to the mast" and has recently donated "tens of thousands of pounds" to the Liberal Democrats.
Perhaps more importantly Palumbo is also offering them his business wisdom: "I am helping them with practical, operational things like marketing. My view is that the Lib- Dems weren't ready for government but they have more clarity now. Nick Clegg is a moral guy and I have always supported politicians for personal reasons."
Palumbo wants a bipartisan approach to combat the risk of a "full-blown financial disaster": "I don't want to come across as extreme or shrill," he says, his diction betraying his Eton education, "but I think [the economic situation] is extremely bad - there are very few levers that can still be pulled. I think it is going to be a bumpy ride."
The author visits his former office at the Ministry of Sound and discusses his new novel about the dumbing down of society
My trainer roars back into the gym. He has been away all summer on a jungle endurance programme and is now a whirlwind of raw energy. Each morning he sees me at the gym. It’s as important a part of my life as work. I believe in keeping fit. Apart from the obvious health benefits, it helps me make clear decisions.
I train with the oldest trainer in the gym. His hair is greying, like mine, but he’s a tough nut. We begin to spar. I can see he’s calculating how much my fitness has fallen off over the summer. Several rounds in, I begin to tire, lower my guard and am caught by a punch. I totter backwards, trying not to fall. I should have been honest about the time I’ve spent on the beach.
After the gym, I’m ready for whatever the day has to throw at me. I’m off to talk to a group of students about my new book, Tancredi. I enjoy sharing my thoughts with others but I’m not quick on my feet like a politician.
I begin by explaining what the novel is about – the dumbing down of society; instant gratification, quick fixes, people turning themselves into morons. There are lots of serious books on the subject but I wanted to do something different. Immediately I’m under attack.
"So it’s not a serious book?" one of the students volunteers.
The founder of the Ministry of Sound talks about clubbing, satire and funding the Lib Dems.
Tancredi is a satire about greed and excess. Is there a solution for that "short -termism"?
I flipped through the TV last night and immediately I saw a bottom on Big Brother. In a few weeks time, on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, in the jungle, it will be "who can eat a bug", or who can be the most moronic. There is a trend, isn't there? I don't know if you can do anything about it. I'm raising the question of where it's all going to lead.
Are we in the midst of a crisis of culture?
I don't like the word crisis, because I don't want to sound like a grandmother. People enjoy these shows. But I think - everyone is getting fatter, aren't they? Where is it all going to end? We already have feature films where there are gladiatorial combats, using people for the amusement of the crowds. Are we going to go back to the days of the arena, where horrible things happen in public and that's what people want?
Tancredi satirises political correctness as well as reality TV culture.
I'm really interested in the tension between being idealistic in politics - which probably leads to oblivion - and being pragmatic, which seems to lead to status. One would have thought that the purpose of politics is to lead, to take initiative, to break the rules. Look at Obama at the UN. He can't support the Palestinians - everybody else wants to, but he doesn't want to piss off the Israeli lobby in Florida, because of the primaries. There doesn't seem to be any point where somebody will take a risk, because when you stray too far from centre, you get obliterated.
Did you always want to write?
I left home pretty young. I wanted to make money. I got caught in that mentality that I must succeed; I must build things up; working all the time. After so many years, I reached a point where, without sounding too dramatic, I was wondering what it was all about. At school I loved Shakespeare, I loved Chaucer. I've always liked writing silly poems for my son, so I guess inwardly, subconsciously or innately, I wanted to give it a go. That's a million miles away from whether I'm any good at it.
You first novel, Tomas, was also a satire. What attracts you to the form?
It's the way I think. Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favourite authors. I like imagination, I like fantasy, and satire flows from that absurd situation
James Palumbo is one of the founders of Ministry of Sound, but he’s not all about music. He’s also just written his second book – the critically acclaimed Tancredi. You’ve probably seen adverts for it all over the Tube. Josh Jones caught up with him to see what it’s all about, what gets on his nerves and how to deal with idiots reproducing.
How did you get from owning Ministry of Sound, to writing a funny, apocalyptic future book?
Music and writing are very connected – the cadence, flow, drama of both mediums is the same. I’ve always loved words as well as music, I had an amazing English teacher at school who was inspirational, as clichéd as this sounds. So my next move was fairly obvious – why not give writing a go? It’s also one of the best means of self-expression and imposing discipline on your thoughts.
Where did your ideas for Tancredi (the book and the character) come from?
I don’t care so much about characters and plot development in writing as the actual ideas I’m trying to express. Tancredi is about the short term thinking that so pervades our society – in culture, media, politics, even really important areas like healthcare. We all seem powerless in the face of the relentless demand for immediate gain and gratification whatever the cost, even the destruction of our planet. Having a character travelling the universe, landing on different worlds, each one representing a different aspect of short-term thinking, was the best (and I hope funniest) way of getting my point across.
My friend who’s a doctor has a plan to sprinkle powder on all fast food so if you eat it more than twice a week, you can’t reproduce. I think that’s an awesome idea. What do you think? (You become fertile again when you stop eating it.)
Brilliant, of course. But it should be you can’t come, not reproduce. People are so venal and lazy they’d just sacrifice having children for food. If they can’t come, then that’s another matter. The question then becomes sex or food? That’s a difficult one.
Out of all the planets Tancredi visits, which would you like to go to most?
Good question. Maybe another way of putting it would be if you had to go to one, which one would it be? I guess Correctomondo. Nothing gets me so angry as political correctness. It’s so pointless. Surely the purpose of politics is to be bold and drive change according to what you believe. But this isn’t possible because to stray too far from the centre results in the immediate incineration of a politician’s career. Politics today is stuck in a sort of ground hog day loop of mediocrity and mendacity. What’s the point? To be able to say ‘once I was the leader’? I’d like to attack the leader of Correctomondo head on.
What’s next on the horizon for you? Will you be doing readings at Ministry?
Another good question. I’m not sure. My life has been odd, privileged but tough at the same time. If there’s a unifying theme it’s that I’ve kept moving on to different things, not always with success. Perhaps I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.
VICE.COM
October 20th 2011
QUANGO - Should the guy who runs the Ministry of Sound be running the country instead?
By Gavin Haynes
“They're the underdogs,” says James Palumbo, the biggest private donor to the Liberal Democrats this year. “I suppose, were you so inclined, you could say that my motives are as psychological as anything – I identify with them on that level. Year after year, people predict obliteration for them. But year after year, they keep coming back. And now they're in government: a position they never thought they'd be in, that they hadn't prepared for. So there was a very immediate, very real need for organisational skills and funding to help them make that transition.”
The sum of £30,000 is the one that people have been slotting after his name in recent days. But he's rubbishing that: “Oh, I've given them much more.” When your net worth is somewhere around £130 million depending on which way the FTSE is swinging that day, most sums are chump change. The entire donated budget of the Lib Dems last year was only £4million. He could buy them and make them all dance like monkey-boys for his tycoon pleasure thirty times over.
So in terms of proximity to power – what has his investment bought him? “Nothing... Zero...” He shrugs. “Look, what are they going to do for me? Am I going to go 'Oh please don't do a mansion tax'? There's nothing they could possibly offer me.”
It came about “Through my friendship with Simon [Hughes – the Lib Dems' leftie attack dog and one-time leadership contender]. I'd known him for nearly 20 years, because he's the MP for Southwark, where the Ministry Of Sound is. And, a need presented itself. Simon is an extremely decent man: honest, passionate, considered... a good Christian... He's always late for meetings because he's helping out some constituent or other...”
As a study in political donation, Palumbo is probably pretty atypical, and the softly spoken tycoon is a pretty atypical guy overall. He already runs his own Ministry – the Ministry Of Sound. A venture he started when he was 28, in a disused warehouse in Elephant & Castle, with no liquor license, and no particular interest in house music. He saw off death threats from drug gangs, shotgun-toting robbers who made off with an entire weekend's takings, and turned the place from the brink of bankruptcy into a global marquee. This year, he claims while filling a goblet with Chateauneuf Du Pape, they've bucked every trend in the book, and had their best set of financial results ever.
“Because we are disciplined. And the rest of the music industry is ridiculous. Did you know that even as profits have dwindled, executive pay has gone up? It's madness. Literal madness. If you come to the Ministry of Sound offices, people are all at their desks by 9AM. It's totally open-plan, and the CEO has a desk right in the middle of the room. We have our ear to the ground, and we work hard.”
Famously, when private equity supremo Guy Hands tried to buy EMI, Palumbo sent him a letter detailing at length why it was a stupid idea that would cost him billions. Guy Hands didn't listen. That cost Guy Hands billions. The EMI layoffs continue.
“The traditional industry model is that you sign ten acts, and nine lose you money, and the tenth makes up for the nine that you lose money on. Well we don't work like that: we do our homework.
The traditional model says that the A&R man can't be disturbed because he's doing his important creative work... and so naturally people get away with murder. We have much better controls.”
He launches into a protracted swipe at Simon Cowell's Syco label. He peddles disposable shit. And ruins lives (here Palumbo talks about the ongoing death-spirals of Leona Lewis). And the once-mighty Sony Music now depends almost exclusively on his slurry for its profits.
It is this type of new millennium transactional blankness that Palumbo has chosen as his chief target in his new satirical novel, Tancredi. People await their certain death while munching on free pizza. They gawp at game shows involving the loss of an arm. They mouth banal platitudes as though they are holy writ. It's the ITV Saturday night schedule in distended microcosm.
Tancredi is angry at the modern world all right, though not quite as gorily angry as the first 50-odd pages of his debut, 2009's TOMAS: one long guts-splattered psychotic revenge-fantasy against the idle, parasitic super-rich. Short and sharp, the book is a Candide-like sci-fi allegory, in which the titular character visits a series of individual worlds that each express an idea about the perils of short-term thinking: a planet full of Coke-guzzling fatsos, a planet full of people miserably being kept alive by unending layers of medical intervention, a planet wibbling its way through layers of gormless political correctness. The short-term fix is fucking us, it argues: and hard.
Later in the conversation, Palumbo suggests there may be a flaw in human nature which combines with a flaw in democracy itself to leave us open to being manipulated in just such short-termist ways. The system just isn't working any more. Democracy, he infers, may not be fit for purpose. So are we to assume he is in favour of a new fascist Britain? “Well,” He smiles, flickeringly. “Maybe a Britain run by [Singapore's founder strongman] Lee Kuan Yeu...”
Despite placing his chips on orange, he still casts himself as non-aligned: “Cameron, Miliband, Clegg – I think they are all, at heart, moral people. I mean, I was listening to Ed Miliband talk the other day, and I thought he was fantastic – real depth, real integrity.” It's an agnosticism that may be something to do with having had close-quarters experience of all sides. Palumbo, after all, was head boy at Eton when Cameron and Johnson were both a few years below him. A figure beloved by some, and be-hated by twice as many, he was notoriously strict: deliberately having boys expelled for drug-taking, giving no quarter in his views on the rules being the rules.
His experience of New Labour was even more up close and personal, chiefly on account of his long-standing friendship with Peter Mandelson. He's used to mounting a personal defence of his chum. “But Peter is steeped in the Labour Party. And he had to fight very hard to make his way up... Peter has extraordinary powers of self-expression. He really thinks very hard about things, and comes to a view. So often, I see him wandering around with a set of clippings of articles he's read...”
Yet Blair he despises: 'The Middle Way' is the not-so-coded satirical conceit Tancredi uses to gunsight the airbrushed and focus-grouped fudge that was New Labour policy, something he describes as 'an utter disaster'. “I met Blair on many occasions, and he was utterly hollow. He had this way of looking through you. Like: 'What can I get out of this person?'”
Likewise, it seems unlikely his pal Simon Hughes would build a shrine to the two models of charismatic authoritarianism he sets up as true latter-day leaders: Thatcher and Reagan. And in the mould of Thatcher and Reagan, he believes that strength has its own clarity, boldness its own genius. He loves a good underdog, true, but seems to enjoy a benign overlord almost as much.
Palumbo is a politically-agnostic political-donor, a fiercely-loyal self-proclaimed outsider, a literary man with a business mind, the anti-drugs, dance-indifferent boss of the world's biggest independent dance music label, who seems to revel in these paradoxes he spins for himself. A Britain run by Lee Kwan Yeu would be interesting, yo. But one ruled over by James Palumbo might be more so.
FANTASY BOOK REVIEW
October 21st 2011
By Jasper de Joode
James Palumbo’s debut novel Tomas established him as a formidable literary satirist, whose vision of a crazed world destroyed by greed and stupidity mirrored the financial chaos that still continues to dominate our public discourse.
When I first requested this book for review I had only read the back and thought that Tancredi would be comparable to Stephen Baxter’s Flood or Arc books. But when I read the first few pages of Tancredi I was surprised to find that it was a whole different ballgame.
Tancredi is a very interesting story, I’m not overly familiar with satirical fiction but I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline. In his journey to save Earth Tancredi visits several planets, each of which centres on human vices – there is, for example, a planet of obesitas and journalism (the trashy kind). In Tancredi you are faced with scenarios and quotations that make the book thought-provoking, “which of the following is true? A. The State shouldn’t care for the obese: they’re responsible for their condition. B. The State should care for the obese, irrespective of the cost. C. The State should care for the obese and compensate them: it is at fault for creating the conditions under which people are unable to control their eating.”
Short-termism is also wonderfully portrayed throughout the book and something that Tancredi continually confronts when visiting planets. Tancredi is a short book (189 pages) but Palumbo’s storytelling makes it more than worth it. It has a gripping storyline and the illustrations used really complement the storyline. I recommend this book to everyone, it’s a thought-provoking novel that always leaves you wanting to know what happens next.
