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Ministry's Top Toff Tackles Thudding House & Demented Tourists

Author: Jonty Skrufff
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Ministry Of Sound chief Jamie Palumbo's efforts to restore his clubbing
group's fortunes struck an immediate obstacle this week when the Sunday
Times dubbed his brand "the M&S of clubland" (Marks & Spencers- slang Ed).

"The big venues like Ministry were based around the thudding beat of house
music," Ex Face magazine editor Richard Benson told the Times, "when the
music changed and the beat became more fractured it just wanted suited to
the big venues."

DJ Magazine's online editor Terry Church was also blunt in a review of the
club's Saturday Sessions, describing "large numbers of demented tourists
clogging up the stairwells and landings."

"The original superclub made clubbing into a corporate enterprise and
betrayed the original unifying values of rave culture," Church complained.
"Because of this, most clubbers think it is a traitor and sell out."

While Church also suggested new promoters and DJs could still turn the club
around, the Sunday Times was less optimistic, suggesting Ministry remains
"stuck somewhere in the year 2001". Ironically, their hyper-critical stance
reflected the kind of press Ministry only started attracting in 2001, when
Britain's corporate media turned on club culture en masse.

"While the club says it turns away hundreds of would-be customers each night
for not being fashionable enough, those who claim to be in the know say the
Ministry is too 90s and too well known to be cool," the Daily Telegraph
scoffed at the time prompting an even crueller reaction from the Standard.

"The fact remains that The Telegraph has just called the Ministry uncool,"
they mocked.

"That's worse than defamation, that's the world turned upside down. That's
like your mum saying, 'Ew, your disgusting Prada bowling bag - that's so
'99'. That's not even a nail in the coffin of Ministry cred (credibility-
slang Ed), that's four tons of turf and a tasteful marble slab," they
quipped.

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