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Planning for an event such as the Q Awards goes on at a number of different levels, through varying periods of time…
…Now, that might not seem like the most enticing of introductions, but stick with me and ye shall be rewarded. Possibly. Anyway, as we were saying, there is much to do done, in any number of ways, before we arrive at 8 October, Q Awards 2007 day.

Some of this concerns nefarious dealings with all of our sponsors which, much as we bless the very ground that one and all of them walk upon, need not concern us here, or indeed anywhere else. Some of this concerns planning how, exactly, we will cover the event online, pre-, post- and during the ceremony. If memory serves, we touched upon this a week or two ago; suffice to say we intend it to be more rounded, insightful and entertaining than ever. As opposed, say, to doing less, with little depth and in a manner as thrilling as paint drying on a wall. We’re good like that.

The stuff going on at the moment that doesn’t concern sponsors or cyberspace operates on roughly four different levels: venue and production, artist liason (two words covering a potential multitude of sins), PR and Q magazine.

With regard to the venue, this is what is currently happening almost as we speak… A crack advance party of Q Awards organisers (that’ll be, in essence, the lovely Marguerite), is visiting our venue of choice – a very nice hotel in London’s West End – and ensuring that a veritable shopping list of essential requirements are all present and correct: from catering and bathroom facilities to plug sockets and ISDN lines (don’t ask me…).

Similarly, when it comes to the production, a further crack team of Q Awards folk (that’ll be Marguerite again) is liasing with the company we have employed to design and deliver the Awards show itself about such stuff as the staging, the graphics and the visuals that will be shown on video screens during the ceremony. This can be a thankless task, since Marguerite is caught in that unforgiving middle ground between the creatives and the moaning old scrote in the Q office (er, me).

The end result of all this to-ing and fro-ing begins to take shape round about now; wherein the stage design has been confirmed (lots of red, more sumptious than is the norm, replete with two large Q logos), and jolly effective it looks too. Ditto the various graphic clips that will denote each award on the aforesaid video screens. And this very week – today, even – we will sit down and wade through the stockpiles of film footage attributable to each of the bands/artists winning merit awards on the day and selecting the most effective clips that will be edited into the respective winners’ packages (ie, the bit when the presenter says, “And let’s take a look at the screens to see just how terrific they/he/she is…”).

How exciting it all is. Less so, on occasion (that occasion being any day with ‘day’ in it), is the liasing over artists wishes and demands. God love them, our pop and rock stars are wont to be a needy bunch. This year, one group of attendees are coming just so long as we don’t try and brutally man-handle them onto the cover of the Q magazine Awards Issue, perish the thought. Another has dispatched their personal assistant to Q HQ as some sort of trouble shooting advance guard lest something unexpected – fire, drought, armed snipers – be lurking deep within the fabric of the event that requires ferreting out. Others want to know precisely whom they will sitting with at their table, what they’ll be eating, and what distance, to the inch, they are from the bar and/or toilets. Patience, in all such circumstances, is a virtue. And a necessity.

PR? No, it doesn’t refer to my initials and, alas, as a resut of this there is not an entire sub-committee founded purely to attend to my every whim. It is Public Relations – which is to say, considering how, where and via whom we are going to ensure maximum coverage for the Q Awards, and its build up (eg; the Q Awards Launch Gig which, should you have missed me tottering around here sporting a metaphorical sandwich board, takes place at Indigo2 at the Q2 on 12 September and features a very fine bill indeed), in the newspapers and on TV and radio. An inexact science this, since it largely depends upon who is coming, and what, if anything, they say or do that is likely to make the news.

When Elton John accused Madonna of miming onstage at the Q Awards a couple of years ago? That’s your PR gift. When Bob Twat from the latest indie sensations complains about the price of fish? Who cares. Ergo, you cannot legislate for such things. But still we try, concocting all manner of fiendishly hatched publicity plots that inevitably come to nought. But do we learn? No, we troop into another Q Awards PR meeting at 11am on 30 August, thank you very much.

Which brings us, finally, to the magazine. We like to make this appear the most complicated process of all, since it makes us look as if we’re piloting something as vast and complex as a star freighter, when in reality it boils down to a series of set procedures that we have been rolling out for years now.

These equate to this: deciding how best to cover the event across 40 pages in the magazine (done); assigning each of the staff and writers of the magazine to chaperone a different celebrity guest, thus ensuring the guest has as comfortable a time as possible, until said chaperone begins asking all manner of silly questions, thus ensuring we have enough content for the magazine (up and running); identifying the member of the Q office who would be most happy plotting a military invasion of Asia, equipping him – for it is always a he – with a clipboard and a walkie-talkie, and putting him in charge of the aforementioned chaperones (so done); and, lastly, scoping and kitting out the Q photo room at the awards venue, thus ensuring that we get a veritable feast of great pictures from the event to use to our hearts’ content (done).

It is this photo room that is the hub of Q’s Awards day. Being of a surly disposition, we ban everyone bar the rich, famous and musicianly from joining us there. And, through the course of the day, the great and good duly troop through it to have their photos taken for Q magazine, and to share a glass champagne with their peers and, well, us. How we love it. So much so, that should the plug sockets all be in the right place, this year we will be placing a webcam in this very room and broadcasting live film from it right here, on the Q website, come the 8 October.

And that, I believe, is where we came in.
Same time, same place, next week then…
PAUL REES – Editor, Q

10:52 AM | 04/09/2007