Interview: Kelvin MacKenzie (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
WANTED: media opportunities big enough to accommodate Kelvin MacKenzie's legendary ego. Having lost the battle to buy the Wireless Group to Ulster TV, MacKenzie, the former's chief executive, is at 58 about to find himself out of a job. The deal has made the former Sun editor £7 million richer, but MacKenzie, mischievously opinionated as ever, has no intention of retiring quietly to his Cote d'Azur villa.
Far from it: the brains behind the News Bunny and Freddie Starr's hamster is currently shopping around for his next media venture. "I'm looking for businesses - in television, radio or print - which need a new direction," he says in the office, just down from talk-Sport's studios, which he will be leaving any week now. "If things were going well, I'd be entirely the wrong person to hire - within 18 months all kinds of things would have gone rather badly and I'd be joining the P45 brigade. But if things needed changing, I would be very interested in investing and also running the businesses.
It just doesn't suit me not being in charge."
MacKenzie has certainly done well out of radio. A consortium he headed bought the loss-making Talk Radio for £25 million in 1998, before rebranding it as talkSport and watching the business's value quadruple over seven years. Although he failed to attract City backing for a management buyout, he has not given up on running another radio venture. His only condition is that this time he has outright control: with only seven per cent of the Wireless Group, it was "painful", he says, being unable to steer the company through difficult times.
So what's next? His invitation to appear on I'm A Celebrity, he fears, has been quietly withdrawn after he mocked the show's researcher in print ("Celebrity Fat Island's more my thing, or, given my current shape, maybe sumo wrestling," he says now). He is equally flippant when pressed about his entrepreneurial plans. "I'd love to own the Telegraph, but I'm just short of 800 million quid," he begins, less than helpfully. "Actually," he continues, more calmly, "I'm slightly more interested in pay-TV, to be honest."
Would this consist of babes-and-gambling formats? He is reluctant to be drawn, in case his interest boosts any acquisition costs. But he does roar at the suggestion that there might be a role for Live TV's News Bunny. "You know, if Trinity Mirror hadn't made a shocking decision in shutting down Live TV [which MacKenzie launched alongside Janet Street-Porter], it would be number six or seven on the electronic programme guide by now. Its audience would be bloody huge. The News Bunny, the bouncing weather dwarf, topless darts - they'd all be major television personalities. I worked out that Trinity Mirror would be making £8-£10 million a year. But the management were just too po-faced."
Never one to drop old vendettas, MacKenzie delivers an unflattering impression of Street-Porter, before launching into a familiar diatribe against executives at Rajar, the radio-audience monitors he unsuccessfully took to court ("They're probably throwing a party to see me go, which is unutterably disgraceful"). Within a few minutes, he is also attacking the Conservative Party chairman Francis Maude ("makes you want to buy a short piece of rope"), the "absolutely bloody mad" Independent, with which he has severed links after it let the BBC respond to one of his articles, and Goldman Sachs, advisers for the Wireless Group's sale. "For their £1.8 million, Goldman Sachs seemed to pick up the phone a few times," he says, in serious mode. "Well, I employ people for £4.85 to pick up phones."
Still, he doesn't seem to have done too badly out of the sale. "Yeah, I've multiplied my investment by four, but I put a lot of bloody work in," he replies. "Talk Radio was totally clapped out, and me and my colleagues worked hard to reposition it, make it a brand. I wish I could have been the one to grow the business. But Ulster are good guys, and I have no doubt they'll continue to make it successful."
MACKENZIE has always been part entrepreneur. Before joining the South East London Mercury at 18 as a junior reporter, he tried unsuccessfully to raise money for a magazine he describes as "a less raunchy FHM". Even while editing The Sun, he launched a freesheet in Gravesend, again unsuccessfully. "After finishing editing one evening, I had to go down and lay out the freesheet," he recalls. "Not very well, I might add. But I've always liked to take a punt."
Reports that he planned to back Piers Morgan's bid for Press Gazette are wide of the mark, he insists. "No, that was never a goer," he says. "I just wasn't interested. But I wish Piers every success - he'll certainly add value, just through his energy."
A rather more mischievous suggestion, in Private Eye, is that Rebekah Wade's days at The Sun are numbered, and MacKenzie's availability may lead Rupert Murdoch to get in touch. "They're having a laugh," he shrugs. "Editing newspapers is a young person's game, not for old codgers. At 58, your interests are going to be radically different from someone like Rebekah's. I'd be very interested in life insurance and wills and inheritance taxes, whereas in your mid-thirties, these things don't play a big role in your life."
He laughs. But if Rupert called? "Ha! I'd say, I think you've dialled the wrong number."
Still, he does not lack opinions on why the red-tops' circulation is declining. Faced with the challenge of the internet, and the rise of Metro in the South-East, it is not surprising, he says, that numbers are falling across the board.
But while he has only positive things to say about The Sun (Murdoch was an investor in the Wireless Group), he takes a further opportunity to knock Trinity Mirror. "The collapse of the Mirror Group titles is quite shocking," he says gleefully. "There's nobody in the management who gives a damn about the titles editorially. So they've got somebody who can count the money. What kind of genius does that take? If you're going to go down, at least go down fighting."
What advice, then, would MacKenzie give other journalists looking to make their millions? "You need a passion, to believe in stuff, to take a risk," he says, almost avuncular for an uncharacteristic moment. But that soon changes. "If you fail, who cares? Well, obviously, your wife and kids may care, as you end up in a caravan sharing the Ramsgate caravan park with asylum seekers and pikeys ..."
He laughs loudly, delighted to be back causing offence. MacKenzie may now be the corporate multimillionaire - but red-top Kelvin is never far away.
(Evening Standard, June 1 2005)
. . . AND READ MORE MEDIA INTERVIEWS HERE . . .
WANTED: media opportunities big enough to accommodate Kelvin MacKenzie's legendary ego. Having lost the battle to buy the Wireless Group to Ulster TV, MacKenzie, the former's chief executive, is at 58 about to find himself out of a job. The deal has made the former Sun editor £7 million richer, but MacKenzie, mischievously opinionated as ever, has no intention of retiring quietly to his Cote d'Azur villa.
Far from it: the brains behind the News Bunny and Freddie Starr's hamster is currently shopping around for his next media venture. "I'm looking for businesses - in television, radio or print - which need a new direction," he says in the office, just down from talk-Sport's studios, which he will be leaving any week now. "If things were going well, I'd be entirely the wrong person to hire - within 18 months all kinds of things would have gone rather badly and I'd be joining the P45 brigade. But if things needed changing, I would be very interested in investing and also running the businesses.
It just doesn't suit me not being in charge."
MacKenzie has certainly done well out of radio. A consortium he headed bought the loss-making Talk Radio for £25 million in 1998, before rebranding it as talkSport and watching the business's value quadruple over seven years. Although he failed to attract City backing for a management buyout, he has not given up on running another radio venture. His only condition is that this time he has outright control: with only seven per cent of the Wireless Group, it was "painful", he says, being unable to steer the company through difficult times.
So what's next? His invitation to appear on I'm A Celebrity, he fears, has been quietly withdrawn after he mocked the show's researcher in print ("Celebrity Fat Island's more my thing, or, given my current shape, maybe sumo wrestling," he says now). He is equally flippant when pressed about his entrepreneurial plans. "I'd love to own the Telegraph, but I'm just short of 800 million quid," he begins, less than helpfully. "Actually," he continues, more calmly, "I'm slightly more interested in pay-TV, to be honest."
Would this consist of babes-and-gambling formats? He is reluctant to be drawn, in case his interest boosts any acquisition costs. But he does roar at the suggestion that there might be a role for Live TV's News Bunny. "You know, if Trinity Mirror hadn't made a shocking decision in shutting down Live TV [which MacKenzie launched alongside Janet Street-Porter], it would be number six or seven on the electronic programme guide by now. Its audience would be bloody huge. The News Bunny, the bouncing weather dwarf, topless darts - they'd all be major television personalities. I worked out that Trinity Mirror would be making £8-£10 million a year. But the management were just too po-faced."
Never one to drop old vendettas, MacKenzie delivers an unflattering impression of Street-Porter, before launching into a familiar diatribe against executives at Rajar, the radio-audience monitors he unsuccessfully took to court ("They're probably throwing a party to see me go, which is unutterably disgraceful"). Within a few minutes, he is also attacking the Conservative Party chairman Francis Maude ("makes you want to buy a short piece of rope"), the "absolutely bloody mad" Independent, with which he has severed links after it let the BBC respond to one of his articles, and Goldman Sachs, advisers for the Wireless Group's sale. "For their £1.8 million, Goldman Sachs seemed to pick up the phone a few times," he says, in serious mode. "Well, I employ people for £4.85 to pick up phones."
Still, he doesn't seem to have done too badly out of the sale. "Yeah, I've multiplied my investment by four, but I put a lot of bloody work in," he replies. "Talk Radio was totally clapped out, and me and my colleagues worked hard to reposition it, make it a brand. I wish I could have been the one to grow the business. But Ulster are good guys, and I have no doubt they'll continue to make it successful."
MACKENZIE has always been part entrepreneur. Before joining the South East London Mercury at 18 as a junior reporter, he tried unsuccessfully to raise money for a magazine he describes as "a less raunchy FHM". Even while editing The Sun, he launched a freesheet in Gravesend, again unsuccessfully. "After finishing editing one evening, I had to go down and lay out the freesheet," he recalls. "Not very well, I might add. But I've always liked to take a punt."
Reports that he planned to back Piers Morgan's bid for Press Gazette are wide of the mark, he insists. "No, that was never a goer," he says. "I just wasn't interested. But I wish Piers every success - he'll certainly add value, just through his energy."
A rather more mischievous suggestion, in Private Eye, is that Rebekah Wade's days at The Sun are numbered, and MacKenzie's availability may lead Rupert Murdoch to get in touch. "They're having a laugh," he shrugs. "Editing newspapers is a young person's game, not for old codgers. At 58, your interests are going to be radically different from someone like Rebekah's. I'd be very interested in life insurance and wills and inheritance taxes, whereas in your mid-thirties, these things don't play a big role in your life."
He laughs. But if Rupert called? "Ha! I'd say, I think you've dialled the wrong number."
Still, he does not lack opinions on why the red-tops' circulation is declining. Faced with the challenge of the internet, and the rise of Metro in the South-East, it is not surprising, he says, that numbers are falling across the board.
But while he has only positive things to say about The Sun (Murdoch was an investor in the Wireless Group), he takes a further opportunity to knock Trinity Mirror. "The collapse of the Mirror Group titles is quite shocking," he says gleefully. "There's nobody in the management who gives a damn about the titles editorially. So they've got somebody who can count the money. What kind of genius does that take? If you're going to go down, at least go down fighting."
What advice, then, would MacKenzie give other journalists looking to make their millions? "You need a passion, to believe in stuff, to take a risk," he says, almost avuncular for an uncharacteristic moment. But that soon changes. "If you fail, who cares? Well, obviously, your wife and kids may care, as you end up in a caravan sharing the Ramsgate caravan park with asylum seekers and pikeys ..."
He laughs loudly, delighted to be back causing offence. MacKenzie may now be the corporate multimillionaire - but red-top Kelvin is never far away.
(Evening Standard, June 1 2005)
. . . AND READ MORE MEDIA INTERVIEWS HERE . . .
<< Home