Oral History Interview - Nick Crombie
Object
Audio file
Production date
06/06/2001
Object number
2026.118
Physical Description
Audio recording (.wav) of an oral history interview with Nick Crombie on 6 June 2001. Interviewer Alex Sidney. Total duration - 36 minutes, 2 seconds.
Description
Summary:
[00:00:17] Nick’s early childhood growing up in Elstree and then moving around London
[00:01:22] Jobs of his family members (Dad, Mum and Grandfather)
[00:04:33] School experience; Barnett, rebellious attitude, barely passing exams
[00:05:47] Studying social studies, love for working in television and first job in that field
[00:08:43] Working his way up in the media industry; editor for BBC, working several productions jobs, writing children’s books, now running New Metro Media
[00:11:09] Main areas of media production that interested Nick
[00:12:45] Nick’s interest in both the TV side and the corporate side of programming; creating serious documentaries and an award winning short film
[00:15:24] Moving from creative role to corporate; creative knowledge helping in running company, invited to set up production companies
[00:16:33] What Metro New Media is as a tech company
[00:18:26] Career path that led to him working at Metro New Media
[00:21:31] Background on Metro New Media, joining and developing the company over several years
[00:26:03] Benefits and downsides of being based in Shoreditch; tech heavy area, word of mouth from respected companies, dereliction in the area
[00:31:05] Nick’s view on how the company might develop over the next few years; training courses adapting to the everchanging needs of new software being developed
[00:33:46] Moving from Ealing to Hackney; first impressions, mixed emotions, growing fondness of the area and the people
[00:00:17] Nick’s early childhood growing up in Elstree and then moving around London
[00:01:22] Jobs of his family members (Dad, Mum and Grandfather)
[00:04:33] School experience; Barnett, rebellious attitude, barely passing exams
[00:05:47] Studying social studies, love for working in television and first job in that field
[00:08:43] Working his way up in the media industry; editor for BBC, working several productions jobs, writing children’s books, now running New Metro Media
[00:11:09] Main areas of media production that interested Nick
[00:12:45] Nick’s interest in both the TV side and the corporate side of programming; creating serious documentaries and an award winning short film
[00:15:24] Moving from creative role to corporate; creative knowledge helping in running company, invited to set up production companies
[00:16:33] What Metro New Media is as a tech company
[00:18:26] Career path that led to him working at Metro New Media
[00:21:31] Background on Metro New Media, joining and developing the company over several years
[00:26:03] Benefits and downsides of being based in Shoreditch; tech heavy area, word of mouth from respected companies, dereliction in the area
[00:31:05] Nick’s view on how the company might develop over the next few years; training courses adapting to the everchanging needs of new software being developed
[00:33:46] Moving from Ealing to Hackney; first impressions, mixed emotions, growing fondness of the area and the people
Associated Person
Crombie, Nick (Subject of)
Material
Digital file (.wav)
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No
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Transcript of interview with Nick Crombie
Interviewer (I): Nick, first of all, for the benefit of the tape could you tell me a little bit about where you were born and roughly when, if you don’t mind being too specific. [00:00:17]
Nick Crombie (NC): I was born on 13th February 1954 in Barts Hospital and then moved from there to Elstree where I spent all of my early life, and then moved to all different parts of London, ending up for about 15 years in Ealing, before coming to Hackney in 1999.
I: I want to just go through that a little bit just to get a bit of a feel about the sort of person you are, so I won't dwell on your childhood too much but do you have any particular memories about particular individuals in your family, or if you don't want to- [00:00:55]
NC: It's alright, go on, I’m just stretching my leg. [Laughter]
I: What sort of family did you come from? [00:01:22]
NC: I came from a family that had historically worked in Belfast in the shipyards. It's a Scottish based family that ended up moving to Belfast, working in the ship yards and then came over to this country around the turn of the century. My grandfather, to use the phrase, travelled in ladies underwear, he was a sales representative for ladies undergarments, but he never really talked about it very much, not surprisingly, and then he ended working at a local government. My father was an only child, and he had to leave school when he was 14 because there was a recession, the big slump in the 1920s, so he had to go out to work to support the family, and had a variety of jobs. He ended up as director of a company which imported foreign foods, exotic foods as they were then, but which are now quite common in Tescos, or whatever.
That was based in Peckham, where I used to work during the school holidays and university holidays. I used to drive a van around London, delivering stuff all over the place and got to know London very well., My father is now retired, at 82, my mother is a bit younger, won't go into her age, and my mother was one of the first air hostesses, as I think they were called at the time, when London airport was based at Northolt, and she was quite pioneering in her way, but in those days when you got pregnant you were not allowed to be employed by British Airways, or British European Airways as it was then, and she had to leave and then she started bringing up her children, with me being the first.
I: So you are actually moving about quite a bit during your childhood, you said? [00:03:37]
NC: No, my childhood was relatively stable. We lived in Elstree from when I was about 2. Elstree was then the big film capital of the UK with MGM and ABPF I think it was called, Associated British Pictures. Film studios all over the place, and most of them are now gone, it's still the place where they record Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and things like that. We fundamentally lived in Elstree which is right next to Borron Wood, because my mother would never accept that we lived in Borron Wood, which she regarded as slightly common, whereas Elstree was a cut above. And I lived there until I was about 18, then I went to university and then started living in a variety of places around London.
I: So when you were at school, what were your particular interests at school? [00:04:33]
NC: Oh, well that could be telling!
I: [Laughter] Academically, let’s confine it to.
NC: I went to school in Barnett, a school called Queen Elizabeth's. It was a very traditional school where you wore a strict uniform; you had to wear a cap, and we actually had school on Saturday mornings as well. It became slightly less formal as time went on. It was a period, this was in the mid 60’s, of enormous social change, with hippies and flower power coming to the fore. So we were stuck in a very traditional school but we were all, certainly in our early and mid teens, totally rebellious, and I spent most of my mid teen years being totally rebellious and obnoxious. And as a result failing most of my O levels, GCSEs as they are now, and barely scraping through to A-levels and eventually barely scraping into university. It was a product of a miss spent youth.
I: So what did you barely scrape through in? [00:05:47]
NC: I can't remember what my O levels were.
I: No, the ones you did like, if any.
NC: I always loved English, and that was the only thing I ever did really well in. It just came naturally to me and I should have gone on to do an English degree but I had such appalling grades that there wasn't a chance of doing that, so I ended up doing social studies which consisted of Sociology, Economics and Philosophy and Sociology was all the rage at the time, it was the new science. After 3 years of university I decided that it was complete rubbish and when I was at university, I discovered that they had a student television network there, which I got involved in wholeheartedly and spent nearly all of my time producing programmes which I thought were absolutely fantastic but no one else watched and left university confident that the BBC would be calling me within 10 minutes of leaving, which they didn't, but it set me on a path for working in television, which I did for the next 20 years after leaving university.
I: So did you go straight into that, even though it wasn't with the BBC, did you go straight into a media career. [00:07:02]
NC: No I didn't go straight into a media career, I am actually a fully trained milkman with express dairies, it was my first job after leaving university it involved getting up at 3.00 am which my parents were absolutely amazed at since I could confidently sleep until about 1.00 pm and I did that job for 8 months, and I have a certificate somewhere which says that I trained to handle milk bottles, safely and securely.
But I discovered that there was a very small film production company which I'd never heard of, quite close to where I’d lived. I was living at home at the time. I simply phoned them up and said I would like a job and they said come in and see us, so I went in and saw them and they.said alright then. It was one of those jobs where you made the tea and eventually if you were really lucky you made programmes as well, it was fantastic, learning on the job in a small company where if you had the enthusiasm and I suppose to a certain extent talent, but mostly the enthusiasm, you could get on.
I: So you started as a runner then? [00:08:19]
NC: I started off as a runner, at least as would be the terms in today's industry, but it was much more of a gofer, a non-specific person who just had to do almost anything asked to do, either day or night.
I: So take us through what happened after that then in terms of how your career progressed in this area. [00:08:43]
NC: Well, this first job was fantastic, not only was I learning on the job, but I suddenly discovered that I was being required to travel around Europe on airplanes and stay in swanky hotels, and so on, and it all seemed terribly glamorous until you got off your 50th aeroplane and stayed in a hotel that looked exactly the same as the last one. I was only 22 at the time and it stopped being glamorous very quickly, but I spent 3 years at this first company learning the ropes and I emerged having decided what I really wanted to do was be an editor, film editor as it was at the time, as video hadn't been invented yet and I went to a variety of TV company's, I went to Tyne Tees, to Anglia and to Southern as it was then, and also to the BBC and worked for a year as an editor, mostly on news programmes and some documentaries, and then I noticed a job with the former presenter of what was then a flagship programme on the BBC, completely forgotten what it was called, and former presenter, whose name was Michael Barrett, he invited me to join his company as a director and I ended up making endless programmes for companies and some for television, corporate videos as they were called and still are and I spent 3 years there,and then moved on to another company where I became producer, director and writer and spent 6 years there and then I was invited to set up a production company within another production company which was in central London and spent 5 years doing that, then I ran an editing company, again in Soho and after that I spent a year writing children's story books and then I saw the job that I'm in now, which is chief executive of Metro New Media.
I: Okay, before we go into that, just to round off talking about the media side of things, you obviously worked your way up and developed your skills in different areas which were all linked, but what would you say was the main area that interested you towards the end to where you were focusing your attention? [00:11:09]
NC: It's a difficult one to answer. I was always interested in all aspects of programme making, having been an editor, I enjoyed that aspect, I liked being a director although it began to frustrate me after a while. Film making is one of those jobs where if it can go wrong, it will. You make fantastically good plans ensuring that nothing goes wrong, and you get there and discover that everything that you haven't thought of is going wrong around your ears. It can be hilarious but mostly it's just frustrating, and sometimes embarrassing too, and I enjoyed the writing perhaps at the end of my career, I enjoyed writing proposals scripts, and so on, far more than I did any other aspects, and that*s why I went back to writing stories.
I: I was thinking more in the terms of the technical areas, more in terms of subject matter, what sort of project you said you were working on corporate videos or whatever, but I assume you were producing programmes and things later on, but what sort of thing would have interested you, or did it not really matter? [00:12:45]
NC: No, there were 2 aspects of programme making that interested me particularly, one was on the TV side, where fairly serious documentaries were things that I enjoyed. I did a 6 part fly on the wall series about trade unionism, which was based in Newcastle, and that took me 2 years to make, it was a real eye opener. On the other side when I was working for companies, often very big companies, when you are dealing with corporate culture, you're trying to distill that into a programme that explains what this company is like, not only to the people who work there, and often with a very large company people don't know what it is, that this company is working for.
But also to explain the company, to people who might be wanting to buy their services or whatever and there was a programme I made for an outfit called ABB which stands for Azara Brown Baverie based in Zurich, a huge company and we made a 9 minute film which cost at the time around £600,000, which was the biggest budget ever for that kind of thing, and we were filming around the world and it won endless awards and it was really the pinnacle of my career, in the sense that if I could make something this good out of something mostly about power stations, to be honest, not the most exciting of things, but if I could make an award winning programme about something like that then I probably would never better it in my life, and at that time I was in my mid to late 30s that I decided I'd probably had enough of programme making in general. I ended up, one of the last things I did, making programmes for daytime TV about fashion, which is a bit bizarre as I'm not the most fashionable of people, but that was just something that I did while I was trying to decide what to do next.
I: So you moved onto writing children's stories? [00:15:24]
NC: What I did was I moved from being a producer, director, writer - I moved from being creative to someone who ran companies, because I knew how the creative process worked, because I'd worked in enough companies, I understood what management was about to a certain extent and when I was invited to set up a production company, my role changed to be less of a creative to more of a manager, well in this case managing Director, and I enjoyed running companies, it had its own challenges it was creative in its own way, and most the companies, in fact all of the companies I have run have either been start up companies, or they have been companies that have been going for some time but are in a particular type of difficulty, normally financial difficulty where I’m brought in to turn things around.
I: So how did you make the move then, I mean was this company the first IT based company that you’d worked for? [00:16:33]
NC: Sort of, Metro New Media is an internet and multimedia training company, it does other things besides, but its primary business is internet and multimedia, software training. The software that we deliver training in is used in areas that are very similar to those in which I’ve worked in the past, production and also multimedia, CD Roms, DVDs, that sort of thing. So I’m running a company where the software we train in, which is highly technical and which I can’t pretend to know the ins and outs of in great detail, is based or derived from an area that I’ve worked in for most of my life.
I: Okay, so to paraphrase, you understand how to use it and the context in which it can be benefited from, if not the technical things of how it is actually put together, or is that a bit simplistic? [00:17:43]
NC: Metro New Media is a training company that trains in software that is very widely used for the creation of websites. I can’t pretend to understand how every bit of software works in detail, but I know what it can be used for and that really as chief executive is what I need to know. My primary job is to run the company rather than to deliver training.
I: If you can just talk us through what you were doing before you took this job and how you came to sort of move into the job and then we’ll start talking about the company itself. [00:18:26]
NC: I think my career has been a series of happy accidents and I decided I wanted to work in television and I was lucky enough to find a company that would take me on, but I didn’t have a structured career path. I decided as I got more experience that I liked working in certain areas, and pushed to work in those areas with existing companies, companies I was working for, or with new companies when those opportunities arose. The job I am in now is not the job I anticipated I’d be working in when I was in my 20s, and how did I get here? It's a bit difficult to summarise, it’s a series of happy accidents and there is some evidence of career progression.
I: I just meant more short term.
NC: What I was doing before I ran here, I took a year out, time out, and I wrote children's stories for a year and had to accept it for publication and numerous other articles . It was a fantastic period of my life, and that I could be totally self determined. What I was doing was entirely me. Unfortunately it wasn’t entirely profitable, I had a family to support and it became important that I found what you might call a proper job and I simply saw this job advertised in the Guardian and that was at the end of 98, applied for it and obviously got it. I joined within 2 weeks of the interview. I’ve been here, I’m in my 3rd year, and the company has grown dramatically in that period, about 500% in terms of its revenue.
I: You’ve told us fundamentally what the company does, can you tell us a little bit about its background and its history, because the job was advertised so obviously something existed before you were here. [00:20:48]
NC: Okay, this is where it gets very dull…or shall we say even more dull, I don’t usually talk about myself.
I: [Laughter] Actually, you’re a lot more interesting than a lot of people I’ve interviewed.
NC: Well, yes but you can’t paraphrase it for 30 seconds, so I’m thinking of my edit points and I’m not sure I’ve found any yet.
I: Well you’re working in a professional capacity then.
NC: No, I’m the world’s worst interviewee you’ll ever find. [00:21:31] Anyway, Metro New Media was set up by London Guildhall University in 1995. They wanted to set up an independent company that delivered training in the internet and multimedia software. Being a university, they weren’t entirely sure how to run a commercial organisation. They provided it with a building, which was based in Old Street and it was huge, far bigger than they needed. Metro New Media started in a building in Old Street, which was bigger than they needed, and gradually grew to fit its environment. It was delivering internet and multimedia software training to a relatively small number of people. After 2 or 3 years, it became clear that the company wasn’t going to grow if it ran as if it was a university department and what it needed to do was operate absolutely as a commercial experience, so they looked around for somebody with commercial experience and an understanding of the Multimedia and internet sector, and they eventually chose me.
So what I have been doing was taking Metro New Media from being a relatively small company, originally run as if it was a university department which means a lot of bureaucracy, administration and being completely averse to risks into a purely commercial organisation that is and has run in that way for the last couple of years. The company is still owned by London Guildhall University, it contributes all of its profits to London Guildhall University and is still wholly owned by them. We work in a variety of areas. We don’t just deliver training in internet and multimedia software, we also run grant aided programs, these are programmes supported by the government from Brussels, which are targeted at small and medium sized enterprises in the area, and designed to help them use the internet to best effect to sell or promote their activities. We also do a lot of web design, we do a lot of IT consultancy and we run conferences here at Metro New Media, so it's quite a broad based organisation but the main thing it does is internet and multimedia training.
I: Am I right in thinking that you arrived about the time that the company moved here. [00:24:32]
NC: I joined Metro New Media 2 months before it moved to its current building on Kingsland Road. It was a building site when I first joined, but seemed to be finished rather quickly. When we moved in there were 7 staff and we rattled around a bit and there are now 22 staff and a range of activities that fills the space we have very well.
I: And do you know why the company chose- presumably the site had already been chosen when you were appointed, do you know the reasons for that? [00:25:08]
NC: Yes I do. I’ll give you a politician's response, rather than the actual one.
I: [Laughter] That’s fine!
NC: Metro New Media was based in Shoreditch, because at the time as it is now, it was the fastest growing area of multimedia and internet activity, designers of all kinds, developers of all kinds had moved into the area and it seemed to be and is, the best place in which to set up a training company of this kind, and that’s the politician’s response.
I: Do you want to elaborate on that or? [00:26:00]
NC: Not on tape, no.
I: Absolutely fine, you said it's advantageous because there are so many other IT companies around here, how does that benefit a software training company? [00:26:03]
NC: If you are set up in an area where the software that we train in is being used by web design and development companies day in day out, you have a natural environment for a training company such as ours. Not only do our clients recognise Shoreditch as being a high tech area, they also know where it is, which is a big help. If we were set up anywhere else in the country, we wouldn’t have that kind of referral, so geography is quite important to us, as it is to our competitors. But being in the same area as companies that use the software we train in is a big advantage. You find clusters of companies all over the place, you find restaurants all clustered together, shoe shops all clustered together. We are clustering together with the IT and multimedia companies that are based in this area.
I: There's actually just a couple of questions you'll be pleased to hear, you were talking about Metro New Media, about how it was such a small company with only 7 employees, and how you expanded and developed and the outturns have gone through the roof. What are the key areas that you’ve been concentrating on? Is it just because of your profile in the area slowly going up or have you been a little more proactive than that. [00:27:41]
NC: We are a service sector company, that means we are obviously providing services to other people. There are a lot of competitors in our particular market. The way in which we’ve grown the business is partly by where we are and people recognise Shoreditch as a significant IT, multimedia and internet area but also through intensive marketing in all of the industry trade mags, PR and so on. But we find now that the best marketing of all that we have is from word of mouth advertising. Most people will come to us because they’ve heard of us. That’s largely to do with the fact that we’ve grown so fast that we’ve had so many people from very substantial organisations in the city as well as locally, come to us and enjoy what they do here and have found it extremely effective. That's good, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing.
There are some downsides to being in this area too, to be honest. We are just up from the end of Old Street in Kingsland Road and it is between Liverpool Street and Old Street Station so it is about 5-10 minutes walk away, but you also have one of the delights of Hackney, which is that you haven’t got a regular and reliable rubbish collection and there is a lot of general dereliction, though that is changing very quickly, there is a building next to us which is being refurbished at the moment, which will be finished by mid summer 2001 and it is typical of many buildings in the area that is being refurbished.
We were the first, we were like the flagship buildings if you like that appeared out of place to begin with this brand new modern building with a huge glass frontage surrounded by buildings that were mostly running to dereliction. Nowadays, in the early part of 2001, you're looking at an area that has dramatically changed in the space of a year with buildings, some being knocked down, but most buildings being refurbished and they're live-work units, they're retail space and so on. That's actually creating problems for the area, for people who live in the area, because some of the prices of property are going through the roof. But it is contributing to the vitality of the area and that makes a big difference to us as well. We're part of something that is growing and that's important to us too.
I: And how do you see things developing in the next, five years say, for this company? [00:31:05]
NC: I see our growth being steady but nowhere near as spectacular as it has been in the first two or three years that I’ve been here. At least I hope not because it’s extremely time-consuming and knackering to deal with that level of growth. But I see the area changing particularly, particularly with the rail link coming, hopefully in the next couple of years, with improvements in infrastructure generally. With improvements to what you might call the fabric, fixtures and fittings of the area. There are various agencies like the Shoreditch New Deal Trust, for example, which are specifically focusing on this area and have many very interesting and effective projects on the go which will raise the profile of the area still further, improve its general look and feel. And I think we will benefit from that. But the core, the main thing is that we still have to carry on providing the kind of training that people actually need. If we don’t do that, then we just go straight out of business.
I: OK. And in terms of the service you provide, it will be more of the same but homed to whatever the needs are of the sector? [00:32:19]
NC: We pretty much change our roster of training courses every six months. Because we're dealing in software, software itself changes every six months or so, with upgrades and so on so we can't stand still. So as soon as we've got one course revised and out on the market and people taking those courses and so on we have to be thinking about what we're going to do next with that course. What, how we're going to change it. Whether we're going to expand it. Whether we're going to add different and new courses and so on. It's constant here. When you're dealing with software you just can't just deliver a standard course. You have to keep changing it the whole time.
I: OK well, certainly my impression of Metro New Media was, as you said, from the building going up, of it being this great modem thing in the area and it is— I've colleagues who've been on training courses here which they've very much enjoyed so you're clearly doing a great job and I wish you every success in the future. And thank you very much for doing the interview. [00:33:09]
NC: You know I live in Hackney now, don't you?
I: Oh I didn't actually. In that case …
NC: There's another little bit then.
I: Right, I'd better ask about that then. You lived in Ealing before… [00:33:46]
NC: I lived in Ealing for ten years and moved to Hackney in the middle of, when was it?, April 2000. I live fairly close to Victoria Park and like it there a lot. Hackney, in fact the whole East End, was an area I didn't know at all well. I knew West London and I knew North London and I knew Central London because I used to drive lorries around it. But East London was a complete mystery to me. I like the area. It's extremely varied. It's extremely vibrant in many ways. It can be quite scary as well and it can be quite depressing. But it's an area where there is a lot happening and it's fun in a way to be part of that, or at least to see all these things happening. I'm going to stay in Hackney or at least East London, I suspect for a considerable time, yes.
I: So you came here for the job but you found as you’ve come here that there are other, I will use what you’ve already said if we’re using that section. Is that basically a fair assessment? [00:34:47]
NC: Yes, yes it is. I mean I came here for slightly more personal reasons but commuting to Shoreditch from Ealing is a non-starter. Moving here was partly by necessity but also because in driving around the area I discovered just how varied it was. I’m currently living in a relatively small place in a small close near to Victoria Park. And I’m surrounded by really interesting people that I actually, I have got to know more people over here than I ever did living in a quite a substantial street in Ealing where basically, half the time you didn’t know who your neighbours were. That’s not the case in Hackney. It’s normally because they’re trying to break into your house and steal things.
I: I’ll cut that bit, if that’s ok [Laughter]
NC: That’s just for you then.
I: That’s brilliant. OK. Thanks very much then.
[00:36:02] END OF INTERVIEW
Interviewer (I): Nick, first of all, for the benefit of the tape could you tell me a little bit about where you were born and roughly when, if you don’t mind being too specific. [00:00:17]
Nick Crombie (NC): I was born on 13th February 1954 in Barts Hospital and then moved from there to Elstree where I spent all of my early life, and then moved to all different parts of London, ending up for about 15 years in Ealing, before coming to Hackney in 1999.
I: I want to just go through that a little bit just to get a bit of a feel about the sort of person you are, so I won't dwell on your childhood too much but do you have any particular memories about particular individuals in your family, or if you don't want to- [00:00:55]
NC: It's alright, go on, I’m just stretching my leg. [Laughter]
I: What sort of family did you come from? [00:01:22]
NC: I came from a family that had historically worked in Belfast in the shipyards. It's a Scottish based family that ended up moving to Belfast, working in the ship yards and then came over to this country around the turn of the century. My grandfather, to use the phrase, travelled in ladies underwear, he was a sales representative for ladies undergarments, but he never really talked about it very much, not surprisingly, and then he ended working at a local government. My father was an only child, and he had to leave school when he was 14 because there was a recession, the big slump in the 1920s, so he had to go out to work to support the family, and had a variety of jobs. He ended up as director of a company which imported foreign foods, exotic foods as they were then, but which are now quite common in Tescos, or whatever.
That was based in Peckham, where I used to work during the school holidays and university holidays. I used to drive a van around London, delivering stuff all over the place and got to know London very well., My father is now retired, at 82, my mother is a bit younger, won't go into her age, and my mother was one of the first air hostesses, as I think they were called at the time, when London airport was based at Northolt, and she was quite pioneering in her way, but in those days when you got pregnant you were not allowed to be employed by British Airways, or British European Airways as it was then, and she had to leave and then she started bringing up her children, with me being the first.
I: So you are actually moving about quite a bit during your childhood, you said? [00:03:37]
NC: No, my childhood was relatively stable. We lived in Elstree from when I was about 2. Elstree was then the big film capital of the UK with MGM and ABPF I think it was called, Associated British Pictures. Film studios all over the place, and most of them are now gone, it's still the place where they record Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and things like that. We fundamentally lived in Elstree which is right next to Borron Wood, because my mother would never accept that we lived in Borron Wood, which she regarded as slightly common, whereas Elstree was a cut above. And I lived there until I was about 18, then I went to university and then started living in a variety of places around London.
I: So when you were at school, what were your particular interests at school? [00:04:33]
NC: Oh, well that could be telling!
I: [Laughter] Academically, let’s confine it to.
NC: I went to school in Barnett, a school called Queen Elizabeth's. It was a very traditional school where you wore a strict uniform; you had to wear a cap, and we actually had school on Saturday mornings as well. It became slightly less formal as time went on. It was a period, this was in the mid 60’s, of enormous social change, with hippies and flower power coming to the fore. So we were stuck in a very traditional school but we were all, certainly in our early and mid teens, totally rebellious, and I spent most of my mid teen years being totally rebellious and obnoxious. And as a result failing most of my O levels, GCSEs as they are now, and barely scraping through to A-levels and eventually barely scraping into university. It was a product of a miss spent youth.
I: So what did you barely scrape through in? [00:05:47]
NC: I can't remember what my O levels were.
I: No, the ones you did like, if any.
NC: I always loved English, and that was the only thing I ever did really well in. It just came naturally to me and I should have gone on to do an English degree but I had such appalling grades that there wasn't a chance of doing that, so I ended up doing social studies which consisted of Sociology, Economics and Philosophy and Sociology was all the rage at the time, it was the new science. After 3 years of university I decided that it was complete rubbish and when I was at university, I discovered that they had a student television network there, which I got involved in wholeheartedly and spent nearly all of my time producing programmes which I thought were absolutely fantastic but no one else watched and left university confident that the BBC would be calling me within 10 minutes of leaving, which they didn't, but it set me on a path for working in television, which I did for the next 20 years after leaving university.
I: So did you go straight into that, even though it wasn't with the BBC, did you go straight into a media career. [00:07:02]
NC: No I didn't go straight into a media career, I am actually a fully trained milkman with express dairies, it was my first job after leaving university it involved getting up at 3.00 am which my parents were absolutely amazed at since I could confidently sleep until about 1.00 pm and I did that job for 8 months, and I have a certificate somewhere which says that I trained to handle milk bottles, safely and securely.
But I discovered that there was a very small film production company which I'd never heard of, quite close to where I’d lived. I was living at home at the time. I simply phoned them up and said I would like a job and they said come in and see us, so I went in and saw them and they.said alright then. It was one of those jobs where you made the tea and eventually if you were really lucky you made programmes as well, it was fantastic, learning on the job in a small company where if you had the enthusiasm and I suppose to a certain extent talent, but mostly the enthusiasm, you could get on.
I: So you started as a runner then? [00:08:19]
NC: I started off as a runner, at least as would be the terms in today's industry, but it was much more of a gofer, a non-specific person who just had to do almost anything asked to do, either day or night.
I: So take us through what happened after that then in terms of how your career progressed in this area. [00:08:43]
NC: Well, this first job was fantastic, not only was I learning on the job, but I suddenly discovered that I was being required to travel around Europe on airplanes and stay in swanky hotels, and so on, and it all seemed terribly glamorous until you got off your 50th aeroplane and stayed in a hotel that looked exactly the same as the last one. I was only 22 at the time and it stopped being glamorous very quickly, but I spent 3 years at this first company learning the ropes and I emerged having decided what I really wanted to do was be an editor, film editor as it was at the time, as video hadn't been invented yet and I went to a variety of TV company's, I went to Tyne Tees, to Anglia and to Southern as it was then, and also to the BBC and worked for a year as an editor, mostly on news programmes and some documentaries, and then I noticed a job with the former presenter of what was then a flagship programme on the BBC, completely forgotten what it was called, and former presenter, whose name was Michael Barrett, he invited me to join his company as a director and I ended up making endless programmes for companies and some for television, corporate videos as they were called and still are and I spent 3 years there,and then moved on to another company where I became producer, director and writer and spent 6 years there and then I was invited to set up a production company within another production company which was in central London and spent 5 years doing that, then I ran an editing company, again in Soho and after that I spent a year writing children's story books and then I saw the job that I'm in now, which is chief executive of Metro New Media.
I: Okay, before we go into that, just to round off talking about the media side of things, you obviously worked your way up and developed your skills in different areas which were all linked, but what would you say was the main area that interested you towards the end to where you were focusing your attention? [00:11:09]
NC: It's a difficult one to answer. I was always interested in all aspects of programme making, having been an editor, I enjoyed that aspect, I liked being a director although it began to frustrate me after a while. Film making is one of those jobs where if it can go wrong, it will. You make fantastically good plans ensuring that nothing goes wrong, and you get there and discover that everything that you haven't thought of is going wrong around your ears. It can be hilarious but mostly it's just frustrating, and sometimes embarrassing too, and I enjoyed the writing perhaps at the end of my career, I enjoyed writing proposals scripts, and so on, far more than I did any other aspects, and that*s why I went back to writing stories.
I: I was thinking more in the terms of the technical areas, more in terms of subject matter, what sort of project you said you were working on corporate videos or whatever, but I assume you were producing programmes and things later on, but what sort of thing would have interested you, or did it not really matter? [00:12:45]
NC: No, there were 2 aspects of programme making that interested me particularly, one was on the TV side, where fairly serious documentaries were things that I enjoyed. I did a 6 part fly on the wall series about trade unionism, which was based in Newcastle, and that took me 2 years to make, it was a real eye opener. On the other side when I was working for companies, often very big companies, when you are dealing with corporate culture, you're trying to distill that into a programme that explains what this company is like, not only to the people who work there, and often with a very large company people don't know what it is, that this company is working for.
But also to explain the company, to people who might be wanting to buy their services or whatever and there was a programme I made for an outfit called ABB which stands for Azara Brown Baverie based in Zurich, a huge company and we made a 9 minute film which cost at the time around £600,000, which was the biggest budget ever for that kind of thing, and we were filming around the world and it won endless awards and it was really the pinnacle of my career, in the sense that if I could make something this good out of something mostly about power stations, to be honest, not the most exciting of things, but if I could make an award winning programme about something like that then I probably would never better it in my life, and at that time I was in my mid to late 30s that I decided I'd probably had enough of programme making in general. I ended up, one of the last things I did, making programmes for daytime TV about fashion, which is a bit bizarre as I'm not the most fashionable of people, but that was just something that I did while I was trying to decide what to do next.
I: So you moved onto writing children's stories? [00:15:24]
NC: What I did was I moved from being a producer, director, writer - I moved from being creative to someone who ran companies, because I knew how the creative process worked, because I'd worked in enough companies, I understood what management was about to a certain extent and when I was invited to set up a production company, my role changed to be less of a creative to more of a manager, well in this case managing Director, and I enjoyed running companies, it had its own challenges it was creative in its own way, and most the companies, in fact all of the companies I have run have either been start up companies, or they have been companies that have been going for some time but are in a particular type of difficulty, normally financial difficulty where I’m brought in to turn things around.
I: So how did you make the move then, I mean was this company the first IT based company that you’d worked for? [00:16:33]
NC: Sort of, Metro New Media is an internet and multimedia training company, it does other things besides, but its primary business is internet and multimedia, software training. The software that we deliver training in is used in areas that are very similar to those in which I’ve worked in the past, production and also multimedia, CD Roms, DVDs, that sort of thing. So I’m running a company where the software we train in, which is highly technical and which I can’t pretend to know the ins and outs of in great detail, is based or derived from an area that I’ve worked in for most of my life.
I: Okay, so to paraphrase, you understand how to use it and the context in which it can be benefited from, if not the technical things of how it is actually put together, or is that a bit simplistic? [00:17:43]
NC: Metro New Media is a training company that trains in software that is very widely used for the creation of websites. I can’t pretend to understand how every bit of software works in detail, but I know what it can be used for and that really as chief executive is what I need to know. My primary job is to run the company rather than to deliver training.
I: If you can just talk us through what you were doing before you took this job and how you came to sort of move into the job and then we’ll start talking about the company itself. [00:18:26]
NC: I think my career has been a series of happy accidents and I decided I wanted to work in television and I was lucky enough to find a company that would take me on, but I didn’t have a structured career path. I decided as I got more experience that I liked working in certain areas, and pushed to work in those areas with existing companies, companies I was working for, or with new companies when those opportunities arose. The job I am in now is not the job I anticipated I’d be working in when I was in my 20s, and how did I get here? It's a bit difficult to summarise, it’s a series of happy accidents and there is some evidence of career progression.
I: I just meant more short term.
NC: What I was doing before I ran here, I took a year out, time out, and I wrote children's stories for a year and had to accept it for publication and numerous other articles . It was a fantastic period of my life, and that I could be totally self determined. What I was doing was entirely me. Unfortunately it wasn’t entirely profitable, I had a family to support and it became important that I found what you might call a proper job and I simply saw this job advertised in the Guardian and that was at the end of 98, applied for it and obviously got it. I joined within 2 weeks of the interview. I’ve been here, I’m in my 3rd year, and the company has grown dramatically in that period, about 500% in terms of its revenue.
I: You’ve told us fundamentally what the company does, can you tell us a little bit about its background and its history, because the job was advertised so obviously something existed before you were here. [00:20:48]
NC: Okay, this is where it gets very dull…or shall we say even more dull, I don’t usually talk about myself.
I: [Laughter] Actually, you’re a lot more interesting than a lot of people I’ve interviewed.
NC: Well, yes but you can’t paraphrase it for 30 seconds, so I’m thinking of my edit points and I’m not sure I’ve found any yet.
I: Well you’re working in a professional capacity then.
NC: No, I’m the world’s worst interviewee you’ll ever find. [00:21:31] Anyway, Metro New Media was set up by London Guildhall University in 1995. They wanted to set up an independent company that delivered training in the internet and multimedia software. Being a university, they weren’t entirely sure how to run a commercial organisation. They provided it with a building, which was based in Old Street and it was huge, far bigger than they needed. Metro New Media started in a building in Old Street, which was bigger than they needed, and gradually grew to fit its environment. It was delivering internet and multimedia software training to a relatively small number of people. After 2 or 3 years, it became clear that the company wasn’t going to grow if it ran as if it was a university department and what it needed to do was operate absolutely as a commercial experience, so they looked around for somebody with commercial experience and an understanding of the Multimedia and internet sector, and they eventually chose me.
So what I have been doing was taking Metro New Media from being a relatively small company, originally run as if it was a university department which means a lot of bureaucracy, administration and being completely averse to risks into a purely commercial organisation that is and has run in that way for the last couple of years. The company is still owned by London Guildhall University, it contributes all of its profits to London Guildhall University and is still wholly owned by them. We work in a variety of areas. We don’t just deliver training in internet and multimedia software, we also run grant aided programs, these are programmes supported by the government from Brussels, which are targeted at small and medium sized enterprises in the area, and designed to help them use the internet to best effect to sell or promote their activities. We also do a lot of web design, we do a lot of IT consultancy and we run conferences here at Metro New Media, so it's quite a broad based organisation but the main thing it does is internet and multimedia training.
I: Am I right in thinking that you arrived about the time that the company moved here. [00:24:32]
NC: I joined Metro New Media 2 months before it moved to its current building on Kingsland Road. It was a building site when I first joined, but seemed to be finished rather quickly. When we moved in there were 7 staff and we rattled around a bit and there are now 22 staff and a range of activities that fills the space we have very well.
I: And do you know why the company chose- presumably the site had already been chosen when you were appointed, do you know the reasons for that? [00:25:08]
NC: Yes I do. I’ll give you a politician's response, rather than the actual one.
I: [Laughter] That’s fine!
NC: Metro New Media was based in Shoreditch, because at the time as it is now, it was the fastest growing area of multimedia and internet activity, designers of all kinds, developers of all kinds had moved into the area and it seemed to be and is, the best place in which to set up a training company of this kind, and that’s the politician’s response.
I: Do you want to elaborate on that or? [00:26:00]
NC: Not on tape, no.
I: Absolutely fine, you said it's advantageous because there are so many other IT companies around here, how does that benefit a software training company? [00:26:03]
NC: If you are set up in an area where the software that we train in is being used by web design and development companies day in day out, you have a natural environment for a training company such as ours. Not only do our clients recognise Shoreditch as being a high tech area, they also know where it is, which is a big help. If we were set up anywhere else in the country, we wouldn’t have that kind of referral, so geography is quite important to us, as it is to our competitors. But being in the same area as companies that use the software we train in is a big advantage. You find clusters of companies all over the place, you find restaurants all clustered together, shoe shops all clustered together. We are clustering together with the IT and multimedia companies that are based in this area.
I: There's actually just a couple of questions you'll be pleased to hear, you were talking about Metro New Media, about how it was such a small company with only 7 employees, and how you expanded and developed and the outturns have gone through the roof. What are the key areas that you’ve been concentrating on? Is it just because of your profile in the area slowly going up or have you been a little more proactive than that. [00:27:41]
NC: We are a service sector company, that means we are obviously providing services to other people. There are a lot of competitors in our particular market. The way in which we’ve grown the business is partly by where we are and people recognise Shoreditch as a significant IT, multimedia and internet area but also through intensive marketing in all of the industry trade mags, PR and so on. But we find now that the best marketing of all that we have is from word of mouth advertising. Most people will come to us because they’ve heard of us. That’s largely to do with the fact that we’ve grown so fast that we’ve had so many people from very substantial organisations in the city as well as locally, come to us and enjoy what they do here and have found it extremely effective. That's good, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing.
There are some downsides to being in this area too, to be honest. We are just up from the end of Old Street in Kingsland Road and it is between Liverpool Street and Old Street Station so it is about 5-10 minutes walk away, but you also have one of the delights of Hackney, which is that you haven’t got a regular and reliable rubbish collection and there is a lot of general dereliction, though that is changing very quickly, there is a building next to us which is being refurbished at the moment, which will be finished by mid summer 2001 and it is typical of many buildings in the area that is being refurbished.
We were the first, we were like the flagship buildings if you like that appeared out of place to begin with this brand new modern building with a huge glass frontage surrounded by buildings that were mostly running to dereliction. Nowadays, in the early part of 2001, you're looking at an area that has dramatically changed in the space of a year with buildings, some being knocked down, but most buildings being refurbished and they're live-work units, they're retail space and so on. That's actually creating problems for the area, for people who live in the area, because some of the prices of property are going through the roof. But it is contributing to the vitality of the area and that makes a big difference to us as well. We're part of something that is growing and that's important to us too.
I: And how do you see things developing in the next, five years say, for this company? [00:31:05]
NC: I see our growth being steady but nowhere near as spectacular as it has been in the first two or three years that I’ve been here. At least I hope not because it’s extremely time-consuming and knackering to deal with that level of growth. But I see the area changing particularly, particularly with the rail link coming, hopefully in the next couple of years, with improvements in infrastructure generally. With improvements to what you might call the fabric, fixtures and fittings of the area. There are various agencies like the Shoreditch New Deal Trust, for example, which are specifically focusing on this area and have many very interesting and effective projects on the go which will raise the profile of the area still further, improve its general look and feel. And I think we will benefit from that. But the core, the main thing is that we still have to carry on providing the kind of training that people actually need. If we don’t do that, then we just go straight out of business.
I: OK. And in terms of the service you provide, it will be more of the same but homed to whatever the needs are of the sector? [00:32:19]
NC: We pretty much change our roster of training courses every six months. Because we're dealing in software, software itself changes every six months or so, with upgrades and so on so we can't stand still. So as soon as we've got one course revised and out on the market and people taking those courses and so on we have to be thinking about what we're going to do next with that course. What, how we're going to change it. Whether we're going to expand it. Whether we're going to add different and new courses and so on. It's constant here. When you're dealing with software you just can't just deliver a standard course. You have to keep changing it the whole time.
I: OK well, certainly my impression of Metro New Media was, as you said, from the building going up, of it being this great modem thing in the area and it is— I've colleagues who've been on training courses here which they've very much enjoyed so you're clearly doing a great job and I wish you every success in the future. And thank you very much for doing the interview. [00:33:09]
NC: You know I live in Hackney now, don't you?
I: Oh I didn't actually. In that case …
NC: There's another little bit then.
I: Right, I'd better ask about that then. You lived in Ealing before… [00:33:46]
NC: I lived in Ealing for ten years and moved to Hackney in the middle of, when was it?, April 2000. I live fairly close to Victoria Park and like it there a lot. Hackney, in fact the whole East End, was an area I didn't know at all well. I knew West London and I knew North London and I knew Central London because I used to drive lorries around it. But East London was a complete mystery to me. I like the area. It's extremely varied. It's extremely vibrant in many ways. It can be quite scary as well and it can be quite depressing. But it's an area where there is a lot happening and it's fun in a way to be part of that, or at least to see all these things happening. I'm going to stay in Hackney or at least East London, I suspect for a considerable time, yes.
I: So you came here for the job but you found as you’ve come here that there are other, I will use what you’ve already said if we’re using that section. Is that basically a fair assessment? [00:34:47]
NC: Yes, yes it is. I mean I came here for slightly more personal reasons but commuting to Shoreditch from Ealing is a non-starter. Moving here was partly by necessity but also because in driving around the area I discovered just how varied it was. I’m currently living in a relatively small place in a small close near to Victoria Park. And I’m surrounded by really interesting people that I actually, I have got to know more people over here than I ever did living in a quite a substantial street in Ealing where basically, half the time you didn’t know who your neighbours were. That’s not the case in Hackney. It’s normally because they’re trying to break into your house and steal things.
I: I’ll cut that bit, if that’s ok [Laughter]
NC: That’s just for you then.
I: That’s brilliant. OK. Thanks very much then.
[00:36:02] END OF INTERVIEW