Geoff Ellis exclusive eFestivals interview

eFestivals interviewed T in the Park organiser Geoff Ellis recently and took the opportunity to ask him a few questions about the Scottish festival.

Are there going to be any major changes this year?
Not huge ones. We always want to improve the event and improve the site layout. We always want to improve how people get to the event in the first place, particularly with the busses, and the traffic management overall. With the campsite we are looking at better facilities this year, and more entertainment. We are working on that at the moment. We will be increasing the capacity of the campsite, and we are taking on a couple of extra fields to do that.

We've increased the residence area, because that's really popular. The actual arena itself – we've been looking at the layout, the bars, and the signage. You can have a great layout but if everyone is all going one way then you can have a blockage and people will find it harder to get through. It's not major changes but it will have an impact on people. The toilets we are always looking to improve the toilets. We are never going to hold our hands up and admit we have the best toilets in the world, despite being voted the best. We just want to improve their placement and their availability. We want less people peeing against hedges and the fence line. It is a tall order because across a lot of other events it happens. You look at football and rugby matches and you get people peeing in gardens on the way to the grounds. It's not the number of toilets – it's the placement, the signage and the access.

One thing we did last year was put troughs on the fences. SO if people can't be bothered to go into where the toilets are we do have these troughs along the fences. Last year we were far from happy with the litter. So we are changing that this year and looking at new ways of getting waste off site. We are doing a good job with recycling things but there is just too much litter on site. I would say last year operationally it was the best one to date, but the litter issues were the worse to date. You want the site to be clean because people will keep using the bins, but if the site is dirty then people will just keep chucking litter on top of litter.

We go through a whole debrief process, but we would like to get more information from the audience and find out what people would most like to change and what people want to keep the same. We get the band sides of things and the overriding thing is "don't change a thing", and we could be arrogant and rest on our laurels and not bother changing anything. But obviously what they mean is don't change the atmosphere, don't change what makes it special.

What is the evening entertainment going to be?
We are going to have some changes on the campsite. Last year the silent disco didn't work. It was more of a logistic thing. The wireless transmissions were interfering with some of the emergency channels which it shouldn't be doing. But we will be looking at the whole entertainment provisions – we want it improve it, we want to add to it, but it's not just a case of putting more dance arenas in the campsite – not everyone wants that. We're going to extend Healthy T into the campsite and have more healthy food options. People really enjoyed using Healthy T, but have had to wait until midday to get in there to get what they want for breakfast – so we are going to put more of an emphasis in the campsite.

In terms of the main site the license is obviously 12pm on a Friday and 11pm on the Saturday and the Sunday so we can't do anything later in the actual arena itself. If the overriding thing was to go later we would look into it, as for us it doesn't cost anything more to start later and finish later but you have got to get the balance right with the local community, so you are not creating noise problems of becoming an unwelcome event in the area. A lot of people like the idea that you can go and watch the bands until 11 and then go off round the campsite afterwards. If a lot of people did want the entertainment to go on later we would look into that.

Will there be a return of the Pet Sounds Arena?
I noticed that was a question on the eFestivals forums. Taking it back to 2008 and why we made the decision not to do it, the year before a lot of people criticised that we had too many similar bands in Pet Sounds and King Tut's and there were clashes. So we made a very conscious decision to keep the content of Pet Sounds and spread it out between King Tut's and Futures. In 2009 we increased the size of King Tut's tent and put bigger Pet Sounds type acts further down its bill. The 2009 Futures stage had Florence and The Machine closing last year, which was bigger than before and the tent will be increased by a third again this year. It is the same with the R1/NME stage - we have bigger acts playing further down the bill there that could have headlined Pet Sounds. We've taken away the structure, but not the content. Again, with having the BBC Introducing stage - it has given us another platform for the smaller Pet Sounds bands.

What is your favourite act in this year's line-up?
It's hard, the acts I'm probably most looking forward to seeing are between Plastikman, Empire Of The Sun, and Dirty Projectors. In terms of show it would be Empire Of The Sun. In terms of the whole package I think the Prodigy I've seen loads of times and you know what you're going to get with them – the full on show. Kasabian are probably going to be the big crowd pleaser of the weekend – and they featured really high in our polls. They might not be as big internationally as Muse, Eminem, Jay-Z, and Black Eye Peas but in terms of a Scottish audience and those who go to T in The Park Kasabian are probably held higher than a lot of those acts.

I think Muse's show will be pretty awesome, and I think with them you don't need to be a huge fan to get the 'wow' factor of watching them. They've never headlined the mainstage before and I think that will blow people away.

Tickets for this year's T in the Park have already sold out.

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