Boss Grooves: T In The Park's promoter tells David Belcher of the trouble he's seen

AS T In The Park's promoter, Geoff Ellis enjoys a busy and varied everyday work-schedule in his pine-clad office at DF Concerts' rustic HQ, a converted stable-block in Stirlingshire's backwoods. In the run-up to the fifth T In The Park, scheduled for July 11 and 12 at Balado, near Kinross, Geoff Ellis must certainly address a wide range of topics.

Music is always to the forefront, of course, but Ellis's brief extends beyond providing the masses with Portishead. He and his team must give them Portaloos, too, in accordance with satisfying all the requirements of an instant township with a two-day population of 45,000, much of it residing on-site under canvas.

Over the past week, for instance, there have been British work permits to arrange for American rappers A Tribe Called Quest; sponsorship deals to be pondered with computer games manufacturers keen to reach T In The Park's youthful market; minor site-plan amendments to be made in order to render impossible any inadvertent conjunction 'twixt main-stage tent-peg and underground BP oil pipeline.

All this is in addition to DF's usual weekly workload of gigs in venues ranging from King Tut's, Glasgow, to Aberdeen's Exhibition Centre. There's also a new temporary tented Glasgow Green venue to be established for the duration of the World Cup, featuring Del Amitri next Friday.

Not unnaturally, Ellis's ever-ringing phone comes to be viewed as both friend and foe. There are continual calls from pop-hungry tabloid newspapers, demanding a spoon-fed diet of ''exclusives''. There are constant up-dates to be run on T In The Park's ticket-sales via its nationwide network of outlets.

Above all, though, Mancunian Ellis daily faces the ultimate telephonic torture. As a dedicated fan of football's most celebrated under-achievers, Manchester City, he has to endure the recurring taunts of the many Manchester United bandwagon-boys who infest the music business.

Indeed, when City exited the English first division last month, Ellis's hands-free clip-on headset burned red-hot with calls from cruel rockbiz funsters claiming to be City supremo Joe Royle. ''The volume of calls had been worse when City's Jamie Pollock scored an own-goal some weeks before,'' says Ellis, ruefully recalling the satirical rhyming possibilities which a host of wits derived from the midfielder's surname.

''But football is actually a very handy social lubricant when it comes to dealing with bands' agents and managers, most of whom are ardent football fans. Football defuses a lot of the tensions and arguments that can arise.

''I've already begun thinking about next year's bill, and the whole booking process is always a complex diplomatic balancing act. T In The Park offers lots of bands, playing in lots of different styles, appearing on a range of different stages. Everything has to complement everything else.

''Getting Band A to play lower on the bill than Band B isn't easy, because Band A will always believe that they're bigger than Band B, and vice versa. Prime positions on the bill and performance fees aren't simply determined by a band's record sales and chart positions, either. Last year, for instance, we put a band on at King Tut's who were then No.1 in the singles chart - yet they didn't sell out their gig.

''Similarly, some huge-selling acts don't draw festival crowds. Basically, there are a lot of delicate egos involved, and those of agents and managers need as much massaging as artists'. You have to know how to present your offers to people in order to avoid getting a straight No.

''If you're offering someone a late-afternoon slot, rather than what's reckoned to be a more prestigious show-closing late-evening one, you have to explain the advantages of such a slot so that an agent can sell those advantages to his clients. As an example, Natalie Imbruglia's people might have insisted on a higher place for her on T In The Park's bill.

''After all, she's undoubtedly a massive pop phenomenon. But she doesn't have a lot of live experience, and while I'm sure that most of the festival crowd will want to see her, they aren't her regular record-buying audience. Her management accepted this, and so Natalie's got a great place on the bill between two indie legends at the start of their solo careers, Bernard Butler and Ian Brown.''

Returning to a football theme, there's no risk of T In The Park itself being upstaged by the World Cup, either, arrangements having been made for big-screen showings of the event's July 12 final.

This neat dovetailing of football and contemporary music is fitting, given that Geoff Ellis began his rockbiz career as a student ents officer at Middlesex Poly where his final dissertation for his media studies degree addressed the class origins and business development of British football.

Any fond T In The Park memories which equate to Manchester City's glorious winning of the European Cup-Winners' Cup in 1970?

''The Slam Dance Tent last year. I'm sure its quality of sound and visuals will be as good this time round. The expression on people's faces when they're having a good time. The fact that we only got one tongue-in-cheek local complaint last year . . . from a 75-year-old lady in Kinross who'd expected she'd be able to share in T In The Park by hearing our music in her back garden - and she couldn't.''

Any unpleasant memories (cf Eric Cantona, Nobby Stiles, Mick Hucknall)?

''Cypress Hill being so late they almost didn't play in 1994. Over-long queues last year for toilets and buses home - we've improved things this year. In fact, I owe myself a good T In The Park 98 . . . after what happened to City, I need something to cheer myself up with.''