Time Outs

Thank God Jeff Dexter chauffeured me and the recently retired legendary journalist David May (who used the nifty 'Hack Typewriters' byline when moonlighting for the late Sixties underground press) to the Museum of London in the Barbican tonight. Without Jeff's guidance, I doubt I would have found the entrance. The Queen Mother couldn't find the museum either when she visited.

It was a sweltering hot evening, and the museum's director, Jack Lohman was sizzling with excitement at the 'enormous potential' the museum now has with Time Out. The youthful Tony Elliott, the institution's founder and owner (he is currently 'considering' selling control of Time Out to help fund online expansion), who has given 'so much' to London gave a worthy speech about Time Out's new special relationship with the museum. The Museum of London will house Time Out's massive archives, and also the museum needs to raise a final £2.3 million to complete their target for creating the new Galleries of Modern London. They are also looking for donors to their "Years of London's History" Timeline, which will wind its way round' the new galleries.

So, who was there at this glittering event? First of all, there was Richard Young the 'celebrity photographer', who was taking paparazzi shots of all the arriving guests. The ex-Time Out journalists almost wet themselves when they saw (Lord) Clive Hollick, the Labour supporting businessman/ex-chief executive of United News and Media - he was the chairman of the Daily Express, and is now a managing partner at the private equity firm KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts). Aspiring gold diggers, he is married.

Also at this glittering shindig (here comes the laundry list) was Pearce Marchbank who did all the early Time Out iconic covers (he told me Mick Jagger keeps his framed bus pass in the lavatory), the film director Alan Parker, the infamous Ernie Ebam, the zany architect Piers Gough, Michael Davis, Andrew Logan, the Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, Alan Yentob and the prolific writer Barry Miles, who kindly credited my quotes he used from my old 'Ritz' Frank Zappa interview for his book on the late icon. Unfortunately, as the acoustics were so noisy, I couldn't hear anything what people were saying, hence no quotes apart from this one from Jeff Dexter:

'How many of the great & good folk here, were at Middle Earth at the Roundhouse Chalk Farm in the summer of 1968, when Tony Elliot & Bob Harris first introduced Time Out publicly?"

I hadn't seen a lot of the guests for years and some of them looked grey haired and unrecognisable. Janet Street Porter looked the same though - Jeff Dexter congratulated her on her display of her 'perfect tits' which conveniently appeared at his eye line. And, I actually recognised James Birch, the art dealer and David Robson - the Daily Express leader writer who is a distant relation. Peter York and pretty Jenny Dearden (whose first husband was Steve Marriot of Small Faces fame) must have portraits in their attics.

It was definitely worth going to the bash tonight, as Mike Plumley, the Managing Director of Blurb, an innovative music PR company is going to send me a list of good new bands to listen too. Hurrah!