Emma John becomes a music promoter



I've always fancied myself as a music promoter. Every summer, in my back garden, I throw a party, a sort of micro-festival, with staging, lighting and extremely tolerant neighbours. The bands play for fun and beers and at some stage, normally after the fifth or sixth act has gone on, and my fears that this will be the year we electrocute a drummer have receded, someone will tell me that, dude, this is ace, and you should totally do this for a living! And I get emotional, and forget the last month of anxious planning and expensive van hire, and I say, yeah, I totally should!

I don't know how most promoters start their careers but I'm certain there are plenty who begin with far less than £100. So I'm not intimidated by the gap between my paltry resources and my rather grander aim to put on a show with a chart-topping band in a major London venue. Did Richard D'Oyly Carte worry about the scale of his ambition? Did PT Barnum?

I make phone calls. Hearteningly, no one laughs me off the line. It's a tough time for venues, and anyone who offers to bring punters through their door is given a fair hearing, especially if they're asking for the graveyard midweek slot. Plus, the usual financial model for these events doesn't require deep pockets. If you can negotiate a split of the takings – with both the venue and the talent – you need not lay any money up front at all.

I soon have an offer of a Wednesday-night slot from Proud Camden, with a very good deal on the door takings. I don't, however, have any talent. My plan to sell out this 600-capacity venue rests on a cynical manipulation of the fashion for "intimate" gigs. My theory: find a band with a large, enthusiastic fanbase – let's say, festival-headlining indie outfit the Mystery Jets – and offer them a door-split for a low-key, acoustic set (this is the only way you will be able to afford them in any case). Result: big name headliner, guaranteed crowd, decent profit margins. The Mystery Jets say yes. At first ask. This promotion lark is a doddle.

I have 40 minutes of live music booked. I probably need a little more. My colleague Shay has noticed that Karima Francis, the majestically talented singer-songwriter from Blackpool, is returning with a second album. The Remedy isn't out until August, but Shay has spotted that she's touring already to support it. The words "love her stuff" have barely left my mouth before the brilliant Shay has booked her. With four weeks to go, I have my line-up – which includes support from an up-and-coming musician called Benedict, and DJ sets from Noise Kitten – and I've rigorously worked out my budget on the back of an envelope.

I haven't yet spent a penny. Proud require £300 venue hire and the DJs will cost £100, but they'll collect after the event, so I just need to sell 50 tickets at my early-bird price of £8 to cover those costs. With the bands, I've agreed a (generous) maximum fee of which they'll receive a proportion depending on ticket sales. To pay them a reasonable wage for their time, I'll need the venue at least two-thirds full. The co-promo deal with Proud Camden includes online ticketing, so all I need to do now is start promoting. Couldn't be easier.

Until, that is, I've been doing it for a couple of hours. "The Mystery Jets and Friends, Unplugged!" I've been screaming on Twitter, Facebook, and, yes, the Guardian website (you call it cheating, I call it resourcefulness. There's no room for shame in this biz…) This is when the panicky phone call comes in from the Mystery Jets's management. Apparently we're jeopardising sales for their big appearance at Brixton Academy (to promote their new album, Radlands), which takes place the Friday before our show. There is, I am told, no question of announcing our gig until that is over. Which leaves me just three working days to get the word out.

Three days. No wonder everything had been going so smoothly – fate had saved all her energy for one knockout punch, and aimed it at my glass chin. Just how was I going to secure myself 600 punters in 72 hours? After a few hours spent cursing the gods of the music industry, I phone a friend in music management – they tell me that every gig comes with a last-minute drama and this is just my official induction into the biz. I phone Proud. We decide to market the gig with a "surprise headline act!", hoping it'll intrigue people into coming, although it's harder to get ourselves on listings sites, and sales are slow.

With three days to go, we've sold 150. Once the embargo is lifted, and with the help of the Mystery Jets's management, we "reach out" to their fans, which is impresario speak for "bombard them with messages on every social media outlet at our disposal". We run competitions with local press and music blogs; come the day of the gig we're around half full. Now it's all about the walk-up trade, and, as the venue manager cheerfully tells me when I arrive: "You're not getting anyone on a Wednesday. Not in this weather." It is chilly, but at least it's not raining. Which is good, because I still have to cycle to Sainsbury's to pick up the band's riders, having no idea how much hummus and cheese an indie band typically gets through. Bang goes my £100.

I had thought once the bands and their professional entourage were in situ, I'd be sitting back making use of my complimentary drinks tokens. But there's a constant call to action – soundcheck disputes to be settled, important decisions to be made. (Do we offer £3 off with a flyer? This flint-heart didn't.) And then there's the horror of the guest list. Why am I letting all these people in for free? Who, for that matter, are they? A young guy with scruffy hair asks me if he can get his girlfriend in, because "she'll kill me if I forget again". I sigh, and roll my eyes. Then realise he's one of the Mystery Jets.

Benedict opens the show at 9pm. There's not a soul in the venue – it's turned mild, and everyone has taken their drinks on to the decking outside. I stamp out there and yell, at the top of my lungs, that the show is starting. I'm damned if my support act is performing to an empty room.

When Karima Francis takes the stage, her smoky voice woos the audience – a good couple of hundred now – into a trance. It certainly soothes my soul. "So what if we haven't sold out?" I shrug to Shay. "People are enjoying themselves!" I head to the bar and stay there until I hear The Mystery Jets go on.

As I walk into the room, I realise something. I can't get in. I mean, I could squeeze through and head to the back, where there's a little space left. But I can't get anywhere near the stage. There must be 400 people in here, singing along to the choruses, waving their iPhones like candles at a Reclaim the Night vigil.

If you build it, they will come. They came. Most of them even paid to come. When I collect the door cash at the end of the night, and the receipts from the online sales, two things hit me. First, I'm going to be paying the bands a decent wage. And second: I'm going to make money.

Final profit: £897.09

Victoria Coren tries her hand online. Photograph: Phil Fisk

Victoria Coren tries her hand at small-stake poker



To spin up my £100 playing online poker, I first have to convert it into dollars, then have a stern word with myself. I deposit the money from my credit card on to PokerStars.com (my tournament sponsors), where it converts automatically into the best currency for getting international action: $153.

Here comes the stern word. The first piece of advice I always give new players is: never bet more than 5% of your bankroll in any one game. Not 5% of your net worth, 5% of money that's been safely ring-fenced as poker funds. By my own stern rules, therefore, I must ignore the temptation to bet the whole $153 at once. I am looking for a $7 "sit and go" tournament.

I can honestly tell you I've never played for such small stakes before. When I started playing, there was no internet; you could only go to a casino and risk at least £50 at a time. By the time online poker arrived, with its unlimited space and choice of stakes, I'd become a serious player and 10 bucks no longer got my blood up.

The other players on PokerStars are used to seeing me play for $300 or $500. As soon as I click to take my seat in a $7 game, an opponent asks (in the chat-box running underneath the virtual table): "Why so small?"

I type back: "I was born that way."

The joke is ignored. An audience of people from Hungary to Mexico gather at their laptops to watch the game, taking it in turns to ask what a "pro player" like me is doing in a $7 tournament. They have a good laugh when I crash out for no money.

I immediately play another, this time finishing second for $17.41. I reward myself by doubling the stakes to $15 and playing two at once; I'm knocked out of one, but win the other for $62.51.

I'm just doing some pleased maths ($44 expended, $80 won, total bankroll now $189), when my editor phones. "Jay opened a restaurant," he says idly. "It went rather well."

"Hang on," I bark. "You never said this was a competition." This is infuriating. I am seized with an urge to lump the whole $189 on a single game, doubling and doubling until I turn it into $5,000.But that would be the act of a gambler. Chasing huge sums, betting everything, is how people go skint. That's how you end up maxing out credit cards and rifling through your wife's wallet. In poker, you mustn't chase that rainbow like a dizzy leprechaun; aim for solid, regular profits on a low-risk outlay.

So, I bite the bullet and play three more $15 tournaments, finishing third in two of them for $25 each. I've now spent $89 to win $130, plus there's $64 left of the original stake.

I've decided to bet each of my Observer dollars once only. Playing poker is an infinite, cyclical adventure: luck in the short term, skill in the long run. But this experiment needs a limit – when I've invested the initial $153, I'll stop.

The correct strategy for "sit and go" tournaments (embraced by everyone in the $300 games I usually play) is to throw most hands away in the early stages – then later, when you have a decent hand, bet all your chips at once. The recreational players in these smaller games waste precious chips on speculative, hopeful bets at the start, then fail to flex their muscles as the endgame looms. They are too nervous of being knocked out.

Having worked this out, I cash easily in my next two $15 events: a second place and a third, for a total of $62.50. Finding the lure of a big finish irresistible, I leap up to a $30 stake – and I win this one outright, for $125.02.

I've got $4 left of the original stake but can't quite bear to play that small, so I donate it back to the Observer, making a final pot of $317.44, which converts to £205.

Are you disappointed? Was the gambler meant to spin up an eye-watering four-figure sum or lose the lot in a blaze of glory? Ah, but that is the moral of the tale. The real triumph of poker is to beat the game, with any profit at all. Aim for too much and you'll lose too much. Stars in your eyes will only blind you to danger.

I'm prouder of simply doubling the money, and the restraint it took to do it, than I'd have been to make a far bigger sum with a risk of going broke. Besides, it worked out at a rate of £21 an hour for my time – and I didn't have to leave the house. Can't say fairer than that.

Final profit £105

Jay Rayner tries his hand at catering. Photograph: Jean Goldsmith

Jay Rayner pops up as a chef

Kenneth Tynan, this newspaper's famed reviewer of theatre, once said that a critic was someone who "knows the way but can't drive the car". Challenged to turn a profit on £100 it immediately becomes clear to me: I have to get behind the wheel. After a dozen years lecturing restaurants on where they have gone wrong, it is time not only for me to cook, but to make money doing so. All I need is a restaurant willing to have me galumphing about in their kitchen. And so one lunchtime I turn up, unannounced, at French and Grace, the tiny restaurant of Rosie French and Ellie Grace in the covered market now known as Brixton Village, not far from where I live.

French and Grace started as bloggers and ran the Salad Club, a pop-up restaurant from their living rooms, and won the OFM 2010 award for best blog. Now they have a permanent spot from which they serve chunky salads, merguez and halloumi wraps, and cakes drenched in salted caramel sauce. Plus, they have a cook book out and I reckoned they'd like a bit of publicity. That said, they hesitate. "Have you seen the size of our kitchen?" Ellie says.

What are you getting at? "Well…" she looks me up and down. I agree the six-ring stove tucked behind a breakfast bar is tiny, but that I can keep my movements very tight. To grease the deal I offer them 20% of the money for every dish I sell to cover their costs. I am working the margins. They practically bite my hand off. Deciding what to cook is both easy and staggeringly obvious. I try to build a bit of buzz by announcing via Twitter that I will be cooking in Brixton Village in a week's time, with a tease that the name of the dish will come a few days later. "It will be pork belly, won't it?" someone immediately replies on Twitter. 'It will be pork belly in a pork-belly jus with crispy belly," says another.

Well yes, it will, but not just because I love the stuff. Each summer there's a street party in my neighbourhood and over the years I've come up with a way to feed a lot of people very quickly, which involves long-braising the meat a day ahead, chilling it, slicing it and then searing it off very quickly on a barbecue. It keeps to clear restaurant cookery principles of doing all the heavy lifting ahead of service.

The pork will come from the butchers that the girls use – a fancy organic, free-range job in leafy Dulwich. But they say they can do it for me at £4.40 a kilo. I scribble costs on envelopes, and decide on 10kg. I can surely get five portions out of a kilo? Can't I? (No, as it turns out; I can get fewer than four.) But suddenly I'm struck by how much else I need: the onions, carrots and celery, the chorizo, the red wine, the brown sugar, the stock cubes for the braising liquor, the tinned cannellini beans for the white bean stew I'm serving with it. "Lidl," the girls says in unison when I ask them. They're right. The discount supermarket sees me right. Hell, they have 2l bottles of red wine at £3.99 a pop. I wouldn't drink the stuff, but as a bath for a lot of pig, it will do. I'm in business now and the bottom line matters. I buy a bandana to shove my hair under while cooking. I am the pirate cook. Look, a boy can dream.

And so one Friday gallons of braising liquor are made, and the belly braised in it for six hours. It is pressed in the fridge overnight while I strain and reduce the braising liquor to make a sauce. On the Saturday morning I transport the whole lot down to the market. I suppose the story would be better if I could report disasters, but there weren't any. We price it up at £8.50 dish. Ellie and Rosie tell me to cut my portion size and I do as I'm told. There is a small queue the moment we start serving, and nobody complains about the amount we're feeding them. A big savoury bowl of white beans. Four sizable chunks of braised belly seared to crisp in olive oil, lubricated with a spoonful of the sauce. A bit of sea salt for crunch. I cook alongside Ellie, who's doing the rest of the menu, and we get spat at by pork fat. She takes a direct hit in the neck. She scowls. The white beans run out and I have to send out for extra cans, topping up the pot as I go. Somehow though, I stay within the £100.

At the end of service the girls compliment me on how self-contained I was. For a big man. "You didn't get flustered," Rosie says. We count up: 37 portions sold at £8.50 a dish. That makes a total of £314.50. In the restaurant trade what matters is the gross profit, which is the amount left over after the cost of ingredients. Industry standard is 70% of the price of the dish. I've managed 68% which we agree isn't bad. But even so the takings are meagre. After their 20% cut, I take home a profit on the original £100 of just over £150. I have worked for two days for a day rate of £75. It's a wage. Many people manage on far less. But it's proof, if it were needed, that making money out of restaurant cookery is tough. In short I proved Kenneth Tynan wrong. I drove the car. I just didn't get very far.

Final profit £151.60

Kitchen & Co: Colourful Home Cooking Through the Seasons by Ellie Grace and Rosie French is published by Kyle Books, price £16.99

Bridget Minamore plays with words. Photograph: Suki Dhanda

Bridget Minamore sets out to sell her poetry

£100 might not be a lot of money to most people. But as a student and a writer, the "most people" tag most definitely does not apply. I've been writing poetry for as long as I can remember, but only started to share it when I was 17.

Over the past three years, I've realised we now live in an age where you're expected to write for free, yet live and perform in a city that grows ever more expensive. Surviving as an artist means becoming a jack-of-all-trades.

Self-publishing has become increasingly common, especially with the young poets of today who perform enough that they can sell a few copies of something after every gig. I worked out that the cheapest way to print the books was to organise it on Word myself (so complicated I barely know how I did it), print the pages on my parents' computer, then photocopy it at the local print shop. A lovely discount from the print man meant that each booklet would cost me £1 to make. After I printed enough paper for 77 booklets – I like the number 77 – and bought an A4-sized stapler to put the pages together, everything came to a grand total of £96.99.

Using the final £3 on some beer to cheer me up during my two days of stapling pieces of paper together over and over again, I came in exactly one penny under budget and my booklet, The Ice-Cream Manifesto, was born. It seemed a pretty apt title since I manage to mention vanilla Häagen-Dazs in about half of them (if you're listening Häagen-Dazs, and you need someone to write poems…) I put the booklets on Big Cartel, an online resource that claims to "help artists make a living doing what they love" (it acts as a shopping cart for people selling design, jewellery and music as well as literature). On it I can sell my booklets via PayPal for free.

I check in after a week to discover I have sold 47 booklets at £3 each. £141! Apparently making money from your art is possible.

Final profit £41

Tom Lamont in the City. Photograph: Suki Dhanda

Tom Lamont plays the money markets

Given £100 of the Observer's money and a mission to "play the market", my immediate notion was to invest in Facebook (going places, they said) before sitting back with a brochure to choose which man-made island I'd buy with the profits. But no rush, I thought, and for a day enjoyed the feel of five unearned 20s in my pocket while I marshalled what little I knew of stocks and shares.

In the 1983 film Trading Places, Dan Ackroyd's character was so good at predicting market swings he could do it on gut, over breakfast. In the sitcom Friends, Monica was so bad at it she creamed her life savings. Bombastic financial drama Boiler Room, meanwhile, had left me with the sense that to play the market was a dangerous and addictive thing that made men unshaven and suicidal. I thought it best to seek advice from those with more experience.

"Focus on volatile stock like mining companies or oil companies," said a trader acquaintance, adding: "This is no time for the retirees' old favourite, the utility company." A friend who worked for a hedge fund had similar feelings. "If you're investing with just £100 go very high risk, very high reward." With the Greek elections approaching (this was late June), she said, there'd likely be a big swing on the euro.

So I contacted Hargreaves Lansdown, an online broker. "£100 isn't really enough," an advisor told me. "Dealing costs would make the whole thing very expensive." He suggested I use the cash, instead, to spread-bet on the markets with a firm such as IG Index. At no point do you physically own stock, using IG, but investments yo-yo with the market as if you did. Call it a gut decision, Ackroyd-like, but I felt the euro had been knocked around enough – I fancied it to pull through a difficult time in Greece. I opened an account with IG and put £50 behind the beleaguered currency.

IG operates a web-based system; you log on through a browser and watch a busy screen of percentages flash blue (good) and red (bad). I followed this, practically in tears with excitement, as the pro-euro party won the Greek election, swelling my investment by £10, £20, £30… I went to bed having doubled my money, and I had a dream in which the blue figure on my screen reached £691 (my subconscious very specific, apparently, in its market expectations). I woke to learn that I'd lost the lot – was in fact down a further £30 after a massive market tumble. I withdrew what was left.

After a few days feeling burned and worldly, I tried again. Recalling my trader pal's advice to invest in volatility, I backed a firm called Brent Crude Oil. It was 11am. At 11.05am, all was steady. At 11.10am, a sickening lurch into the red; next, for 15 happy minutes, a majestic rise into the blue. I looked likely to be in triple figures by lunchtime, but I'd learned a lesson from the euro fiasco and wasn't going to rest on this. I left my computer at 11.30am to get a can of Sprite and, back at the screen, found that though my investment had levelled out I was still in profit.

I don't know exactly what happened in the wider world of oil at 11.37am. Brent Crude, certainly, had a very bad two minutes. My investment vanished in a flicker of red pixels in the time it took me to pop the can and have a swig. "This is not the time for the retirees' old favourite, the utility company," the trader had said. Now it felt the time. I put my remaining £17 behind the reliable, incontestably dull National Grid, and there it remains. At the time of writing I've made a profit of 86p. Enough, anyway, to cover the Sprite.

Final loss £82.14

The total profits of £1,112.55 will be donated to Emma's choice of charity - as she was the winner. The Vine Trust supports street childrens' centres in Peru and Tanzania, and provides healthcare along the Amazon with its two medical ships (vinetrust.org)