input: Merchant began his career performing stand-up comedy at Bristol's Comedy Box, where, he recalls, "The first week I did really well. The second week I died on my arse. I realised that stand-up was not that easy after all." He also appeared as a contestant on a 1997 episode of the TV game show Blockbusters and worked for a short time as a DJ for Radio Caroline. Merchant met Ricky Gervais for the first time in 1997, when Gervais (then in the position of "Head of Speech" at the London radio station XFM London) hired Merchant as his assistant. (Gervais said later that he had called Merchant for an interview simply because it was the first CV handed to him.) Merchant and Gervais hosted a Saturday afternoon radio show together from January through to August 1998, when both of them left XFM as it was bought by the Capital Radio Group. In the same year, Merchant was a finalist at the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Awards. Merchant worked for seven years at XFM 104.9. The Saturday show never had a large audience; Gervais says "It's a tin pot radio station... It's not even the biggest radio station in the building." He created the features 'Hip Hop Hooray', 'Make Ricky Gervais Laugh' and 'Song for the Ladies'. After leaving XFM, Merchant began a production course at the BBC. As part of his coursework, he enlisted Gervais to perform in a 30-minute short film, "Seedy Boss," which became the earliest inspiration for their sitcom The Office. They collaborated on a sitcom pilot called Golden Years featuring a manager suffering a mid-life crisis; the pilot aired on Channel 4's Comedy Lab series in September 1998, but failed to find further success.

Answer this question "Did the show do well?"
output: They collaborated on a sitcom pilot called Golden Years featuring a manager suffering a mid-life crisis;

input: In 1994, Ford was promoted to Creative Director of Gucci. In his first year at the helm, he introduced Halston-style velvet hipsters, skinny satin shirts and car-finish metallic patent boots. In 1995, he brought in French stylist Carine Roitfeld and photographer Mario Testino to create a series of new ad campaigns for the company. Between 1995 and 1996, sales at Gucci increased by 90%. At one point, Ford was the largest individual shareholder of Gucci stock and options. By 1999, the house, which had been almost bankrupt when Ford joined, was valued more than $4 billion. When Gucci acquired the house of Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) in 1999, Ford was named Creative Director of that label as well. Saint Laurent did not hide his displeasure with Ford's designs, stating "The poor man does what he can". During his time as creative director for YSL, Ford nonetheless won numerous Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards. Like his work at Gucci, Ford was able to pull the classic fashion house back into the mainstream. His advertising campaigns for the YSL fragrances Opium (with a red-haired Sophie Dahl completely naked wearing only a necklace and stiletto heels in a sexually suggestive pose) and YSL M7 (with martial arts champion Samuel de Cubber in complete full-frontal nudity) were controversial and provocative. In April 2004, Ford parted ways with the Gucci group after he and CEO Domenico de Sole, who is credited as Ford's partner in Gucci's success, failed to agree with Pinault Printemps Redoute boss over control of the Group. He has since referred to this experience as "devastating" and as a "midlife crisis" because he had "put everything into that for fifteen years." When Ford left in 2004, Gucci Group was valued at $10 billion. Four people were hired to split the work Ford had done.

Answer this question "what else is interesting about him being creative director at Huccie and SL?"
output: His advertising campaigns for the YSL fragrances Opium (with a red-haired Sophie Dahl completely naked wearing only a necklace and stiletto heels in

input: The influence of Olivier Messiaen on Takemitsu was already apparent in some of Takemitsu's earliest published works. By the time he composed Lento in Due Movimenti, (1950), Takemitsu had already come into possession of a copy of Messiaen's 8 Preludes (through Toshi Ichiyanagi), and the influence of Messiaen is clearly visible in the work, in the use of modes, the suspension of regular metre, and sensitivity to timbre. Throughout his career, Takemitsu often made use of modes from which he derived his musical material, both melodic and harmonic among which Messiaen's modes of limited transposition to appear with some frequency. In particular, the use of the octatonic, (mode II, or the 8-28 collection), and mode VI (8-25) is particularly common. However, Takemitsu pointed out that he had used the octatonic collection in his music before ever coming across it in Messiaen's music. In 1975, Takemitsu met Messiaen in New York, and during "what was to be a one-hour 'lesson' [but which] lasted three hours ... Messiaen played his Quartet for the End of Time for Takemitsu at the piano", which, Takemitsu recalled, was like listening to an orchestral performance. Takemitsu responded to this with his homage to the French composer, Quatrain, for which he asked Messiaen's permission to use the same instrumental combination for the main quartet, cello, violin, clarinet and piano (which is accompanied by orchestra). As well as the obvious similarity of instrumentation, Takemitsu employs several melodic figures that appear to "mimic" certain musical examples given by Messiaen in his Technique de mon langage musical, (see ex. 4). In 1977, Takemitsu reworked Quatrain for quartet alone, without orchestra, and titled the new work Quatrain II. On hearing of Messiaen's death in 1992, Takemitsu was interviewed by telephone, and still in shock, "blurted out, 'His death leaves a crisis in contemporary music!'" Then later, in an obituary written for the French composer in the same year, Takemitsu further expressed his sense of loss at Messiaen's death: "Truly, he was my spiritual mentor ... Among the many things I learned from his music, the concept and experience of color and the form of time will be unforgettable." The composition Rain Tree Sketch II, which was to be Takemitsu's final piano piece, was also written that year and subtitled "In Memoriam Olivier Messiaen".

Answer this question "What happened then?"
output:
he asked Messiaen's permission to use the same instrumental combination for the main quartet, cello, violin, clarinet and piano (which is accompanied by orchestra).