Jonty Skrufff's Blog

James Palumbo (click on the picture to access the Tomas website)

“There are two sorts of men, my friend: those who seek riches and glory, and the others. The former will, no doubt, find what they seek, in varying degrees. So? They die. What imprint do they leave? Nothing. Only echoes. The others seek a higher purpose: to make a difference to those around them: to change, shape or improve things, if only to a small extent’.

Though Ministry of Sound chief James Palumbo is the first to admit his novel Tomas, like all debut novels, is partially autobiographical, it’s through side character Napoleon that the book delivers his best lines.

“The risk taker is defined by one idea only, burned into his soul: a willingness to fail,” the French Emperor tells Tomas as he outlines his roadmap to becoming a ‘great man’. “That’s why wealth and glory seekers can’t qualify,” Napoleon continues. “They may take risks but only up to a point. And they would never endanger their spoils or glory.”

That’s he both super-wealthy and a mega-high achiever is immediately apparent from the most cursory of Google searches. While Wikipedia says ‘James had a privileged childhood and grew up at Buckhurst Park, Windsor, now the UK home of the King of Jordan’, the Independent is more specific, labelling him the ‘formidable-sounding scion of the Palumbo property dynasty, founder of Ministry of Sound, and 406th (equal) richest person in Britain’. Clicking further, however, reveals a highly developed propensity for risk-taking; a trait he admits has characterised much of the first 46 years of his life.

“When I was in banking I took a big risk when I started a legal action against my family which could have obliterated me financially,” he recalls, “Then also during the first few years of the Ministry of Sound I took another when I could have been shot in the head.”

The first tale involved a bitterly fought court battle with his father (multi-millionaire property magnate Lord Palumbo) over his deceased grandfather’s Trust Fund which he won in 1995, while the second involved some of taking on some of London’s most dangerous gangsters two years earlier. Kicking out the security teams from the club in 1993 over drug dealing issues, he took to wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying CS gas to work, precautions his advisors indicated were more than necessary.

“There was a business management guy at the time who used to come into the club, he was like a manager/ psycho-analyst,” James recalls.

‘His job was to teach everyone the logical consequences of their actions and he said to me at one point ‘you do realise that you could be killed’,” he shudders.

“I did realise that but I really don’t think I had any options,” he muses, “It’s a bit like I say in the book; you’ve got to charge the gun, you’ve got to get into the arena.”

In the book, the story’s central character Tomas tackles (and murders) fat cat corporate businessmen, ‘aggressively challenging the moral corruption at the centre of the present financial turmoil’ the book’s sleeve notes suggest, though throughout Tomas’ real enemy isn’t individuals but a state: Russia.

Accusing the country of using money to ‘debauch Western values and behaviour’ via ‘envy, the corruption of scruples and social dysfunction’, the narrator (in this case Russian general ‘the Great Bear’) is direct.

“Oligarchs, the new weapons of war, are welcomed with open arms by society, irrespective of their backgrounds,” the Great Bear notes, “Yachts, mansions and jetted-in prostitutes are envied as symbols of the Great Bear’s new empire. Previously good people now bow in submission to the vulgarities of Russian taste, behaviour and power.”

So does James have many- any- Russian friends?

“No. I do not,” he says, “I’m sure they wouldn’t want me to be their friend either.” And does Ministry have any interests in Russia?

“No, zero,” he says.

James at the beach

Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): Starting with Tomas, why did you write it now, and how long have you been thinking of writing a novel?

James Palumbo: “I had no plans whatsoever to write a book, whenever anyone says they’re going to write a book you think ‘Oh Christ, have you got nothing else better you want to do? You’re a bit of a loser’, but I did business for 20 years as you may know and was pretty busy with that, and that had been my game. And also I’ve always been interested in how people relate to money and how they behave when they’ve got it. And I started writing with absolutely no agenda, no plan, no agenda, no characters, no idea. I was just sitting in my comfortable chair at home and I started writing. What I think actually happened was that 20 ideas of mush about stuff just came out of my head. There was no plan literally from one moment to another to write a book.”

Skrufff: How long did it take from that first step to creating a book and getting it published, how easy was that process?

James Palumbo: “I wrote it very quickly because I knew what I wanted to say over about four or five weeks. It’s only 50,000 words. It was an intensive process but it was also a lot of fun, one of the most fun things I’ve ever done. But, getting published is like going back to school. I found an agent and the agent had an editorial team and what happens then is that they take you through what works and what doesn’t work. And you’re very defensive and proprietorial about your work and you think you know best but it’s just like school. I ended up rewriting it and improving the text enormously over a period of about a year and then the publisher got their own editor to work on it. So what you first produce and the way it ends up are two totally different things.”

Skrufff: You have a very eclectic list of celebrity reader endorsements, everybody from (writer) James Herbert, to Stephen Fry, Rory Bremner and Pete Tong, how did you choose these people, are they presumably friends?

James Palumbo: “I read all of James Herbert’s books from childhood and he sold 40 million books and he’s a serious writer. I think Rory Bremner is probably one of the best satirists out there, Noel Fielding, you know. I’ve never met any of these people, apart from Pete Tong who I met once years ago. Stephen Fry is the ultimate isn’t he, he’s so gracious and thoughtful. I was really happy he liked the book.”

Skrufff: The book is a political satire, did you send the book to any politicians for reviews, such as Peter Mandelson and David Cameron?

James Palumbo: “Peter Mandelson (a highly controversial major power in Britain’s Labour party) you probably know is a friend of mine, so yes, he read it. I’m less friendly with (Conservative leader) David Cameron. Peter read it as a friend rather than a critic.”

Skrufff: What do you make of the current political situation in the UK with so many politicians discredited by the expenses scandal?

James Palumbo: “I don’t know quite what I think about politics to be honest with you. I’ve never joined a political party, I don’t quite know whether I’m left wing or right wing, I’ve got friends in all the parties, not just the Conservatives and New Labour. I’m a big supporter of Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat guy in South London. I’m not really informed enough to comment on politics I’m just a naïve person who doesn’t really know what they think. What I write about in Tomas is far more extreme than the issues affecting the politicians. Sure they cheated on their expenses, a hundred pounds here, two thousand pounds there, but that compares pretty favourably to politicians in most other countries in the world and compared to what I was writing about in the book was sort of nothing. And not that interesting in comparison to some of the stuff that goes on amongst people with real money.”

Skrufff: You spoke to the Daily Mail recently and talked about wearing a bullet proof vest and carrying a stun gun and tear gas when you took on gangsters controlling the drugs trade at Ministry, many people would have walked away at the point, why did you decide to take them on?

James Palumbo: “Because it was me against them. At that stage in my life I preferred to face the music than have had to live with giving up. It sounds as if I was trying to play the tough guy or taking the moralising position but it wasn’t like that. I don’t think it had anything to do with money either, I don’t even think I was courageous, I didn’t feel physically brave, I just wasn’t going to give in to these gangsters.”

Bernard Mahoney on notorious London gangster Pat Tate (click on the picture for more: fascinating details of early 90s crime)

Skrufff: Did you actively consider walking away at any point?

James Palumbo: “I’m not sure, I know what you’re trying to ask. There’s one bit in the book that I’m trying to work through which is the question of whether it’s easier to be brave if you’re stupid. And I think I say those unemcumbered with an education just get on with doing what they’re told. It was just a thought that occurred to me that maybe if you’re more cerebral then maybe you’re more questioning and if you’re more questioning then maybe you’re more frightened. At that time it was black and white for me.”

Skrufff: Many of these gangsters are still around, do you have any anxieties about awakening old grudges by talking about these stories?

James Palumbo: “I think they’d have to be pretty careful now though I know these guys are immensely stupid. In the book I talk about rats and respect which I personally think is very funny. The whole gangster code is about respect which is a stupid word (slipping into mock thug accent) . . ‘respect, respect, don’t disrespect me’. The code for morons is that the more you’re in prison the greater respect you have so by the time they’ve been in prison four or five times they’re the ones clicking their fingers and expecting deference because they’re the really hard men who can take it. Good for you, you’re in for another seven years, isn’t that fucking brilliant.

In terms of my satire and what I was trying to say philosophically was ‘who do these people respect the most?’ the answer is people who’ve already been killed. They’re the people who are really respected. I know that these people are morons but they’d have to be truly stupid to kill me because they always get caught afterwards, don’t they?” If someone came to shoot me in the head I think they’d probably get caught one way or the other.”

Skrufff: Tomas is opposed to mega consumerism and the elevation of characters such as professional footballers in popular culture, how do you answer the charge that Ministry is promoting similar values, for example, through videos such as Benny Benassi’s soft porn centred Satisfaction?

James Palumbo: “I don’t think we’re doing that at all, we’re the opposite. If you look at the champagne spraying clubs in London where they make 20,000 euros for one table per night, we’re dealing in a totally different area. What are the life spans of these clubs? Two years, Three years, four years? We have always been for everyone, yes we have a VIP area, but we never make the slightest fuss whether a footballer comes down or not. We’ve got 2,000 people paying £15 and that’s it. Away we go. Then everything else we do whether it’s CDs or bottles of perfume, they’re little treats for people’s lives. But that’s a million miles away from what I’m writing about in Tomas.”

Benny Benassi's Satisfaction (NOT the original video) click on the picture

Skrufff: In your interview with the Daily Mail you talked very dispassionately about the low drug dealer you handed over to the police who later jumped under a train, did you feel any sense of responsibility for his death?

James Palumbo: “I guess I was pretty anaethetised at the time, it was so terrifying. Actually you almost feel frozen in time and space. At that time for me there was no point in keeping the club clean or having a proper VAT audit because if you could be killed them why bother? I was in that state of mind then, the guy broke the rules and I was thinking about that red line between anarchy and control which was what the security wanted. I was protecting my business and that was it, he was caught, so I handed him over.”

James Palumbo’s debut novel Tomas is out now via Quartet Books.

Jonty Skrufff (http://skrufff.com)

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