Dream team: team Kylie

It’s easy to imagine there being a dozen Kylie Minogues, doubles or clones, all just shy of 5ft with that adorable pearly overbite, each putting in a few exhausting frontline hours before switching places with a hand slap. Minogue has kept herself secure in the pitiless game of pop for 27 years now – ridiculous work, and she remains busy beside.

Consider the last two years, in which time Minogue managed a Cannes-approved acting turn in Leos Carax’s Holy Motors and became a bi-continental TV draw, judging The Voice in the UK before making weekly London-to-Sydney flights to do the same in Australia. The 46-year-old dropped a 12th career album in the spring, Kiss Me Once, and will begin touring it over 38 dates this autumn. There’s an argument to be made that when she gigged at the close of the Commonwealth Games last month, a breathless half-hour of loco-motions done, of arounds spun, Kylie’s was the only serious, world-class performance of the tournament.

The Australian should be so lucky to get some sleep – her workload enabled not by a squadron of boomerang-browed clones (sadly), but by a loyal and large team, currently 17-strong, 18 if you count an ever-present pug that belongs to Kylie’s creative director William Baker, and 19 if you include the centrepiece attraction herself.

Last week, the team was in south London, rehearsing the imminent tour, plans “three-quarters there”, by Kylie’s reckoning, nudged hourly closer to completion by four dancers and a choreographer, Ashley Wallen; four musicians, two backing singers and a musical director, Steve Anderson; tour manager Sean Fitzpatrick and production manager Kevin Hopgood; a one-man strike team for hair and makeup, Christian Vermaak; and Kylie’s keeper of the appointments book, an unflappable and quietly terrifying personal assistant, Leanne Buckham.

Known within the team as “Lion”, Buckham has been by Minogue’s side for 14 years; or just shy of a century, because “personal assistant years are like dog years”, Kylie tells me. “You spend more time with your PA than you do with your partner or your family.” Creative director Baker (“Willie”) is another team veteran, a teenage shop boy when he met the pop star in the 1990s, waylaying her with unbidden styling suggestions while she browsed at Vivienne Westwood in London: “A great creative mind and a best friend,” Kylie says. Baker was responsible for the immense feather headdress she wore at the Commonwealth Games, paired that night with leather boots so high and so tight, it appeared that she had taken to the stage after wading through an oil spill. “A total Willie original. As was everything [I wore] from about 1998 onwards.”

Managing a team, Minogue says, “is a continual process of sorting the wheat from the chaff. Some people might not live up to your expectations. But people in my inner sanctum are diamonds, really. And mostly we have a laugh.”

Mostly? “I’m fair. I’m kind. But when things do get out of hand, and the proverbial hits the fan, there’s a thing that’s known as the Look.” Friends sometimes request an out-of-office-hours demo of the Look, she says, and quickly ask her to stop. “You don’t want the Look. You really don’t. I don’t even want the Look. I don’t like giving the Look. But it’s there. Like a shark coming at you.”

Between tours and TV gigs, album drops and fittings for oil-slick leather boots, Minogue says she chooses to holiday with some of her team. She’ll rent a villa in Ibiza, with Lion, Willie and tour manager Sean, “just to hang out. Even when we’re not working, we’re family. Don’t get me wrong: there are times none of us wants to see each other. But the truth is, for the most part, together’s where we like to be.”

Who’s who

(1) Ben Akl, 22, dancer, with Team Kylie two months

(2) Ashley Wallen, 35, choreographer, first danced with Kylie when he was 17

(3) Katie Collins, 27, dancer, six months

(4) Tom Meadows, 37, drummer, four years

(5) Jenny Griffin, 29, dancer, six months

(6) Dishan Abrahams, 32, bass player, four years

(7) Aaron Witter, 28, dancer, two months

(8) Luke Fitton, 26, lead guitarist, four years

(9) William Baker, 40, creative director, 20 years

(10) Pete Watson, 30, keyboards/band musical director, seven months

(11) Arthur, William Baker’s pug

(12) Kylie

(13) Christian Vermaak, 36, hair and makeup artist, six years

(14) Roxy Rizzo, backing singer, six years

(15) Leanne Buckham, PA, 14 years

(16) Lucy Jules, backing singer, five years

(17) Kevin Hopgood, 48, production manager, 14 years

(18) Sean Fitzpatrick, 49, tour manager, 14 years

(19) Steve Anderson, 44, musical director, 20 years

Dream team: the Today programme

Today is made in a room known as “the cubicle”. It’s smaller than the average bedroom, and seven people (including spectators) are sitting inside its charcoal cocoon. It is not homely. Ceiling, walls, carpets, even the spotlights are grey. The monotony is broken only by a knuckle-duster of TV screens, a smear of lipstick on the rim of a mug. This space belongs to no one, and comes alive on the stroke of 5.58am. Or, as presenter John Humphrys says, “Our bums don’t touch the seats till seconds before we’re on air.”

At 6.03am, the first crisis hits. There are waves of these small calamities. Each seems enormous for half a minute, then vanishes; it’s chaos, in small segments. A guest fails to pick up on Skype. Someone mispronounces Beijing. Listeners – 6.71 million of them a week – email to query the programme’s coverage of Rotherham. “Why aren’t you focusing on the perpetrators? Is it because you’re scared?”

People hurtle in and out. Time is valued in seconds, and even the tea run is conditional on speed. “Anyone want coffee very quickly?” All the while, senior studio manager Matt Sims is pressing buttons that squirt disembodied voices into the room, fragments of prerecorded items. “I just felt so alone,” a woman says.

Alongside Rotherham, today’s other big story is that puffins are under threat. By 7am, the puffin’s saucy call has been aired twice. When an interviewee describes puffins as “the Frankie Howerds of the bird world”, the story grows wings. Reacting to its audience is one of Today’s strengths.

In the second hour, a guest in favour of Scottish independence claims that the Scottish council for exports has to pay to hire a British embassy abroad, while UK companies do not. Presenter Evan Davis is surprised. “We should get on to that,” he says. He has a piratical look, his headset permanently askew. “Was that in the brief?” asks the editor, Jamie Angus. Within moments, the British ambassador in Rome emails to complain. The claim is inaccurate; a clarification is needed. But the available time has already been allocated to the call of the eider duck.

“Can I have 30 seconds? Twenty?” asks Angus. Four spare minutes are built into each show, but a guest is overspending. “Wrap him!” the night editor says into Humphrys’ ear. The oblivious guest, Sir Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College, keeps talking. “Shut up!” hollers Angus.

Seldon is silent. There is time for the correction. As the final seconds loom, Purminder Ghandhu, senior studio director, whirs her hand like helicopter blades: “Got to be it!” Humphrys points at the cubicle for the triumphant claxon of the eider duck. It sounds slightly less like Frankie Howerd than the puffin.

Who’s who

(1) Mishal Husain, 41, presenter, with the show 11 months “I’ve listened all my adult life, but nothing could have prepared me for that first green light in the studio on my first day.”

(2) Justin Webb, 53, presenter, five years “The presenters fight back sometimes. We cook up schemes to get particular items moved, got rid of or promoted. This morning I got an item that I didn’t want to do transferred to Sarah [Montague], who physically attacked me.”

(3) Oliver Woods, 44, business producer, eight months “One morning at 5am, John Humphrys asked me, ‘What day did Gordon Brown give the Bank of England independence in 1997? Was it Saturday?’ After some quiet typing into Google, I was able to answer, ‘Tuesday’.”

(4) Matt Sims, 54, senior studio manager, 25 years

(5) Purminder Ghandhu, 43, senior studio director, 20 years “I make every guest recite ‘Peter Piper Picked A Peck of Pickled Pepper’ before they go on air.”

(6) Ollie Stone-Lee, 38, planning editor, seven years

(7) Justin Rowlatt, 48, business presenter, four months “I described Britain’s new aircraft carrier as a ‘boat’ (it’s a ship!). It didn’t go down well with the former first sea lord, Admiral Lord West, who was on the phone to correct me before we’d even finished the item.”

(8) Louisa Lewis, 32, senior broadcast journalist, two years “I produced an interview with Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller – she and Dame Judi Dench shared stories, both fact and fictional, about running an intelligence agency.”

(9) Gilly Orr, 35, senior broadcast journalist, 10 years “My highlight was out on the road in Libya and Bahrain at the start of the Arab spring – the story combined rebels, undercover police and anti-aircraft weaponry Sellotaped to the back of pick-up trucks.”

(10) Katie Prescott, 30, senior broadcast journalist/output editor, two years “Most exciting moment? Editing the programme during the recent revolution in Ukraine. Reports started to come in that President Yanukovych had fled Kiev, and members of the public and our reporters were able to wander around inside the presidential palace.”

(11) Siobhan Wornell, 30, producer, two years

(12) Andrew Bryson, 37, night editor, 18 months

(13) Edward Drummond, 30, broadcast assistant, 10 months

(14) Jamie Angus, 40, editor, on and off for 15 years “My most tense moment? The airline bomb plot in 2006, when UK airports all shut down overnight – one of the very rare programmes where the whole running order was thrown in the bin at 4am and we started again from scratch.”

(15) Jade Lauriston, 29, sport producer, one year

(16) John Humphrys, 71, presenter, 27 years “I don’t have any tea or coffee, before or during. When I come in, I have a big bowl of fruit and yoghurt and at least one banana, sometimes two.”

(17) Tom Feilden, 50, assistant editor and science specialist, 19 years “It’s all very seat of the pants and under-resourced.”

Dream team: Coronation Street

There are plenty of characters on the set of Coronation Street, behind the camera as well as in front. Prop man Alan “Ginge” Newton recalls a highlight of his Corrie career with glee: throwing a bucket of water at actor Jack P Shepherd, who plays David Platt (and won “best villain” at the Best Soap Awards in 2008): “I had to drown him three times. I really enjoyed that.”

To call the making of Britain’s favourite soap quite a production would be an understatement. First aired in December 1960, the show is not far off episode 8,500 and regularly attracts 8 million viewers (40% of all available viewers). So it seems fitting that such an institution is created within a 7.7-acre site nestled behind Manchester United’s Old Trafford and across the water from Media City, the new media hub of the north.

All things Corrie are here, from the dressing rooms to the editing suites to a warehouse full of interior sets and, of course, the famous cobbles. The security guards and receptionists make you feel as welcome as a relative, and cast members mill around – Simon Gregson, who plays Steve McDonald, is relaxing on a sofa and happy to chat to whoever is passing by.

If you ask members of the crew to name the best thing about working on the show, many say, “It feels like one big family”, which might sound trite if it weren’t for the fact that many have been working on it for more than 20 years. “I’ve been away and done other things,” says makeup artist Jill Stansfield, who started 21 years ago, “and coming back just feels like coming home.”

As they finish lunch, the crew piles on to set, an interior of the Rovers Return in the warehouse, complete with all the necessary props, including crisp packets, beer mats and those hot pot dishes. It looks significantly smaller in real life than on screen. There is plenty of chatter. Bev Callard, who plays Liz McDonald, jokes with her onscreen boyfriend Tony, played by Terence Maynard, and the makeup and wardrobe teams. A certain reverence surrounds director Peter Rose, and first assistant director John Folkard assumes a ringmaster-type roll, directing people into place in a booming voice with the occasional wry aside.

As our shoot concludes, the mick-taking and chit-chat comes to a halt. Folkard calls everyone to their positions and demands silence. The lights go down except for those on Callard and Maynard, the monitors are switched on and shooting begins.

Who’s who

(1) Ellen Taylor, 42, writer, with the show five years “Writing Hayley’s cancer diagnosis and funeral episodes was a high point; being part of a storyline that really affected the nation.”

(2) Robbie Sandison, 56, head of production, nearly three years

(3) Ros Aynsley, 36, art director, six months “I grew up watching Coronation Street, and the first day I couldn’t resist having a little walk around the cobbles. It was really early, and I was on my own walking down the street. It was brilliant.”

(4) Kieran O’Neal, 22, runner, three weeks

(5) Lizz Briggs, script supervisor, four years

(6) Simon Cleobury, 51, camera operator, 12 years “When Dev’s wife went on a reign of terror, blowing up all his shops, we went around town blowing things up, which was really good fun.”

(7) Neil Jones, 38, camera assistant, four years “Working on locations like the Lake District is great. It’s very challenging in winter.”

(8) Stuart Blackburn, 49, producer, two years

(9) Jill Stansfield, 48, makeup, 21 years

(10) Peter Rose, 62, director, four years

(11) Bev Callard, 57, plays Liz McDonald, 25 years “I have had great scenes – she’s been raped, she’s been held hostage at gunpoint, she’s been battered, there’ve been dead babies... but I think what we’re doing now is fantastic.”

(12) Terence Maynard, 45, plays Tony Stewart, nine months

(13) Daniella Pearman, 33, costume, 10 years

(14) Brian Owen, 50, charge hand/electrician, 13 years

(15) Chris Roach, 49, lighting director, six months

(16) Martin Robinson, 48, sound supervisor, on and off for 30 years

(17) Max Wilkie, 22, boom operator, two years

(18) John Folkard, 55, first assistant director, 10 years “I came here for three weeks and now I’m on year 10. The live show was really exciting and difficult. I had never done that before.”

(19) Linda Strath, 55, makeup supervisor, 33 years (rejoined after a long break 17 years ago) “I love doing all the injuries.”

(20) Alan ‘Ginge’ Newton, 48, prop man, four years

(21) Karen Bevins, 60, costume assistant and supervisor, two years

Dream team: Spotify

Spotify’s Stockholm office is the kind of place that gets lovingly profiled in design magazines. It comes complete not just with live performances by well-known musicians but spaces equipped with instruments for employees to play, which you might have thought would be a hindrance to hard work: what if you’re trying to get on and Barry from accounts is letting off steam by playing an off-key version of Wonderwall?

Spotify’s 31-year-old CEO, Daniel Ek, disagrees. “I happen to believe that it takes people about 15 minutes to focus on a task, and then their attention span is about 70 minutes, and after that they need to break off and do something else, and for me, personally, that is playing music. I have spaces between meetings where I just play the guitar. It gives me more energy back for the next task.”

It’s fair to say that Ek has grand ambitions for the music streaming service he co-founded in 2006. “We’re trying to become more contextually aware of what it is you do and when you do it and what you care about,” he explains. “For example, this morning I was working out, and as I was working out, Spotify was immediately suggesting workout music, because it knew that I usually do that at this time of the morning. Having better workout music meant I was able to run a bit longer, a bit faster; it made that moment much better. There are a lot of moments that could be enhanced with music. That’s one of the things we’re working on. Like, for instance, if you’re having a party, you can’t assume that your own music is a good proxy for that moment. You have to think about whether other people in the room will enjoy it. I think we’ve got to become a lot smarter in general, not just about your own tastes, but what’s happening around you, who are you with, what are you doing?”

Whether a music streaming app that knows what you’re doing and who you’re with, and adjusts the soundtrack accordingly, sounds like an astonishing vision of a technologically assisted utopia or a bit creepy is a moot point, but it has to be said, Ek and Spotify have proved pretty accurate at predicting the future thus far. No one really talked about people not wanting to own music when the Spotify app launched in 2008, with a staff of 30. Six years on, virtually everyone seems convinced that streaming is the future of music consumption.

“People want access rather than ownership,” Ek says, envisaging a world in which the only music people actually own comes on vinyl, marketed as a covetable luxury item to die-hard fans, and where everyone else streams. Accordingly, since 2012, Spotify has expanded from employing 250 people to 1,400. How does he recruit? “I look for things people do in their spare time. What kind of hobbies do they have? It doesn’t matter if you’re into Japanese gardening or music – how you got into it is more interesting. Are you curious and open-minded? That says way more than any education you’ve gone through.”

Who’s who

(1) Jonathan Forster, 36, Nordic MD and interim vice-president Europe, seven years “Although in the main a hard-working and efficient people, Swedes need only the most spurious reason to down tools and have fika. This typically comprises cinnamon buns washed down with unfeasibly strong coffee. On my playlist: FKA twigs, Deptford Goth, Ten Walls, Al Green (always!).”

(2) Michelle Kadir, 32, senior director of content and distribution, five years “We have an advanced music studio that employees can book whenever they want to. There is a lot of unreleased employees’ music on a hard drive somewhere in Stockholm. On my playlist: PartyNextDoor.”

(3) Lisa Brännfors, 26, consumer insights analyst, seven months “A substantial part of internal communication occurs through animated gif images. On my playlist: Candy, by Wake Owl.”

(4) Gustav Söderström, 38, chief product officer, six years “There are cocktails and live acts every Friday. On my playlist: Iggy Azalea, Röyksopp.”

(5) Alex Norstrom, 37, vice-president growth, three years “I learned Spanish by the watercooler, from overhearing the Spanish engineers socialising. On my playlist: Carlos Santana, Kendrick Lamar, PartyNextDoor.”

(6) Rochelle King, 42, global vice-president, user experience and design, two years “No one is a music snob here. I have the musical tastes of a teenage girl, but nobody minded. On my playlist: Charli XCX’s SuperLove.”

(7) Angela Watts, 38, vice-president global PR and communications, five years”One week, an engineer in Stockholm hacks an exercise bike to play workout tracks when you pedal at a certain RPM, the next there’s a programme in New York showing people around the world playing the same song at exactly the same time.
On my playlist: Devil’s Touch, by Tiaan.”

(8) Daniel Ek, CEO and co-founder, 31

(9) Martin Lorentzon, chairman and co-founder “I like to ride my unicycle, to juggle and to play classical songs on my guitar. On my playlist: Rodrigo y Gabriela.”

(10) Oskar Werkelin Ahlin, 25, software engineer, two years “A lot of our employees play instruments, and our office has guitars all over the place. On my playlist: some 80s stuff, and a bunch of groovy remixes.”

(11) Niklas Ivarsson, 45, global head of licensing, seven years “Due to excellent coffee machines, I have become a coffee addict. I constantly think about cutting down on those 12 mugs a day. On my playlist: the Swedish rock band Johnossi and Ryan Adams’ Gimme Something Good.”

(12) Ludvig Strigeus, 33, senior software engineer, eight years “People in the office sometimes have wars with Nerf guns and the toy bullets end up everywhere. On my playlist: Stolen Dance, by Milky Chance.”

Dream team: Henry Holland

When fashion designer Henry Holland arrives at his design studio in east London, fresh from a week’s holiday in Mallorca, his team seems genuinely pleased to see him, as though he were a good friend as opposed to a boss. The fact is, he is a bit of both. “People always say you should never employ friends,” says Holland, 31, “but the majority of people in this room I knew personally before I hired them.”

Team House of Holland, a core of 10 (plus a gaggle of interns who are a permanent fixture in the runup to fashion week), is very much a gang of mates. “It’s like a school playground,” Holland says. “It’s crucial for me to create the right atmosphere. In this industry, it’s a very blurred line between work and play.”

The brand was founded on a sense of cheek and irreverence: Holland’s debut collection T-shirts in 2006 featured slogans such as I’ll Show You Who’s Boss, Kate Moss and Let’s Play Naked Twister With Linda Evangelista. The ready-to-wear empire now has 125 stockists in 30 different territories worldwide, and gains an average of eight to 10 new stockists a season. Holland has also catered to the masses thanks to collaborations with Debenhams, Pretty Polly, Levi’s, eBay and Magnum (as in the ice-cream).

He launched his first bag collection this summer and is planning a menswear line, so it is surprising to discover such a small team working around just three shared desks in one half of the room; the other half is taken up by design worktops, with fabrics, files and paper patterns oozing out of every crevice. “People think we should be a lot bigger, because of the outward perception of the brand,” Holland says, “but it is important for me to stay small for as long as possible. The brand is very much about me and my personality. I have a real fear of relinquishing control.”

So, is he a tough boss? “That’s the one problem,” he says. “No one is scared enough of me. They take the piss and call me ‘Dad’, but there is an unspoken culture of respect, and there is a shared genuine passion for what we do.”

And with that he joins the team to contemplate the flower embellishments on a look worn by the fitting model (essentially a live mannequin), followed by his French bulldog Peggy, and everyone gets back to work.

Who’s who

(1) Kate Levy, 36, accountant, about 21 months “If Henry really wants to do something, I do my best to make it happen.”

(2) Caroline Adams, 31, head of PR, five years “Running around wondering whether x, y or z celebrity is going to turn up to the show is quite stressful. You never know who’ll turn up until they step out of the car.”

(3) Fiona Sheward, 47, pattern cutter, two years

(4) Jill Henry, 36, production manager, two years

(5) Emmeli Kimhi, 25, website production coordinator, one year

(6) Alcy Lynch, 28, head of design, two years “It’s not very glamorous. I just sit down in the corner and draw every day.”

(7) Gina Anderson, 22, PA to Henry Holland/studio coordinator, 11 months “The show is the most stressful and the most exciting eight minutes of your life. But then I do have to change the occasional lightbulb and order the toilet paper.”

(8) Peggy, Holland’s dog

(9) Henry Holland, 31, designer and creative director

(10) Hamish, Fletcher’s dog

(11) Anna Barnett, 29, international sales manager, six years “When I started, it was just the three of us, but we’re still a close team.”

(12) Jessica Fletcher, 31, international sales director from launch

(13) Alena Hillson, that day’s fitting model