by Chris Evans
Warrington soon woke up to the hilarity of the kissogram and before I knew it, I was up to seven or eight kissograms a night at the weekends. I soon doubled my prices as I’d planned and even brought in a couple of pals to help out with the engagements. I remember exactly where I was on the night of Live Aid when Madonna came on stage, I was pulling up in my car to Orford Park Recreation Club ready for another semi-naked performance of my own.
The kissograms were a means to an end and it wasn’t long before I had saved up enough money to enter the realms of the mobile disc jockey.
I bought all the gear required for a mobile disco and secured some regular pub dates, I became resident in one pub—seven nights a week! I convinced the publican that every night would be better with music and that if he let me leave my gear there, I would do four nights for free. This meant I didn’t have to haul all the gear round all week; it also meant I could sell my van and buy an MG Roadster instead. In all I was soon doing nine discos a week, seven nights in the pub and then two later on at clubs on a Friday and Saturday.
The discos were good business but another test of my resolve was just around the corner. At Christmas all the mobile DJs could charge a premium for their ‘shows’ and a pretty hefty one at that. You could easily make enough money for a decent holiday abroad during the festive season.
It was two days before my first Christmas booking when, still living with my Mum, I was on the way home late one night after working at a club. I had invested in a Datsun estate car by now, my record collection was getting bigger and although my turntables, speakers and lights didn’t need to move I had to take my records wherever I was appearing.
It was around three o’clock in the morning and I couldn’t have been more than a mile from home when I heard my exhaust blowing—at least that’s what it sounded like, it was really loud. ‘Strange,’ I thought, but it soon became evident what the problem was when I pulled up to park outside our house. Somehow the tailgate on my car had come open, which was why the exhaust seemed so loud. Not only that but to my utter disbelief, somewhere on the way home my entire record collection had fallen out.
I was stunned, I couldn’t believe what had happened. To a DJ his record collection is everything, you have to have all the records for all ages of clientele, from the waltzes for the oldies through the sixties and seventies right up until the latest top twenty, as well as the novelty records for the kids. My diary was booked up all over Christmas and I had just lost every single record I owned.
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*At its peak this company was part of an organisation worth over £1,000,000,000 pounds. How mad is that?
Top 10 Dance Floor Fillers for Mobile DJ C. Evans circa 1985*
10 ‘Let’s go round again’—Detroit Spinners
9 ‘Love really hurts’—Billy Ocean
8 ‘Blame it on the boogie’—Jackson 5
7 ‘Eye to eye contact’—Edwin Starr
6 ‘Never too much’—Luther Vandross
5 ‘Always and forever’—Heatwave
4 ‘It’s a love thing’—The Whispers
3 ‘December, 1963 (Oh, what a night)’—The Four Seasons
2 ‘Young hearts run free’—Candi Staton
1 ‘You to me are everything’—The Real Thing
The next day I woke up and still couldn’t believe what had happened. Of course the night before I had driven straight back over the exact route I had come home but someone had obviously got to my records before me. All that I found was one lonely twelve-inch single of ‘Relax’ by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
I was so close to throwing in the towel that morning but Mum made me a cup of tea and gave me some kind words of encouragement, enough to cause me to think about the situation a little more rationally. I could give up but what good would that do? Was this situation redeemable? What would Bill, my nice old Scottish boss, have done? One thing is for sure: he wouldn’t have sat there feeling sorry for himself.
One hour later I was in Woolies buying every compilation album they sold—all the hits, Christmas or otherwise. I ended up with around twenty albums and just about enough tunes to get me through the Christmas party season—after which you could almost guarantee some of the other guys were bound to sell up and move out of the mobile DJ world, having cashed in one final time. Sure enough this year was no exception. I earned my extra cash and snapped up some other dude’s record collection sometime early in the new year and before I knew it I was back on top—and with a much better variety of tunes than I had in the first place.
Being a DJ, as I had hoped and suspected, did indeed have many advantages, including that when all the other blokes were drunk and trying to chat up the girls (by the way, why do blokes wait until they are least able to do this, i.e. towards the end of the night when they can barely walk or talk?) I would be stone-cold sober. Not only that but I would have a set of wheels outside ready to go, whilst everyone else had to resort to running the gauntlet of the queue at the cab rank, a notorious hot-spot for punch-ups—second only to the queue for the late-night chippy.
It was this sobriety and availability of transport which led me to meet Alison, the mother of my daughter Jade.
By now I was the DJ at the mighty Carlton Club, the same place where my brother had DJ’d a decade or so before. Alison was a regular there and was absolutely stunning, with masses of cascading blonde hair and a dazzling smile. She also used to wear these long flowing dresses that followed her obediently around wherever she chose to float—and that’s exactly what she did, she floated—magnificently. She was cool, curvy, sexy and funny, what was not to like?
Alison and I got it together one evening when a friend of hers came over and ‘told’ me to ask her out. To be ‘told’ to ask a girl out when you have also been informed that if you do then the answer is going to be yes is one of life’s great joys. I promptly did as I was ‘told’ and Alison and I were very much inseparable thereafter.
Within not very long at all I was staying over at her house most nights—her mum was very liberal, something for which we were both hugely grateful. This ‘understanding’ meant we were free to do all the things young couples liked to do and we did them a lot. We did them so much in fact that one day a little baby called Jade arrived.
I was twenty-one by now and financially things were going well for me, by that I don’t mean I was on the way to my first million or anything like that, but well enough for Alison and I to buy our own house. Which we did, a sturdy old three-bed terraced house with a tiny front garden, a yard at the back and a knockthrough living/dining room downstairs. But a baby was something neither of us had planned and it wasn’t long before it became obvious things were not going to work out.
Alison had been nothing but supportive of me when it came to my efforts in the world of entertainment, especially when I mooted the idea of getting back into radio. I had arrived home one night and seen a guy who I used to work with at Piccadilly who was now on the telly; somehow he’d managed to bag his own slot and although not bad, he was a little bland to say the least. If he could make it, I knew I definitely had a chance, and the difference now was I also had the funds to back me up.
I discussed my feelings with Alison and she was nothing but encouraging and positive—this is her natural disposition. In fact it was she who pushed me to make the initial call to get back into Piccadilly. I remember specifically what she said:
‘Go for it, if that’s what you really want, you have to go for it.’
Alison was totally selfless when it came to my ambition but I simply wasn’t around enough to be supportive of her in the far more important task of bringing up a young child—in short, I was a selfish prick. I came back to the house one day and Alison had had enough: she had gone back to her mum’s with the baby.
What did I feel at the time? I’m ashamed to say relief. I saw Alison going back home as leaving me free to carry on chasing my dreams—pathetic, I know, but that’s where my head was at the time. To think now what it mu
st have been like for her to be effectively abandoned by the father of her child and, being such a young age herself, left to bring up a little girl all on her own makes me feel awful. Not surprisingly it’s the one thing I wish I could go back and change.
Thank Christ, Alison is the decent person she is and has continued always to put Jade first. She could so easily have let her feelings towards me dictate her decisions but she instead has remained steadfastly loyal to Jade and her well-being, and has done all she can not to let her own feelings get in the way of any chance Jade and I may have of getting to know each other. Jade has always come first with Alison, regardless of whatever else may be going on, testament to what a truly fantastic mum she has been and is one of the many reasons Jade loves her to death.
Inevitably, from the point Alison moved back to her mum’s we grew further and further apart. With our relationship effectively over I decided to move to Manchester, but before I did so, Alison insisted we meet to talk about the future as far as Jade was concerned.
We arranged to meet one evening to discuss what we would do as a long-term strategy considering we had a child together. We met in a pub called the Britannia in Warrington. I’ll never forget that night. Alison laid it on the table, plain and straight. That’s her style. She said if I couldn’t be relied upon to be around on a regular basis it would be best if I stayed out of the picture altogether.
Alison had had enough of me not being there when I said I would be and stated in no uncertain terms that she was more than capable of bringing up her daughter on her own. If I wasn’t prepared to help her, she would much prefer to get on with things by herself rather than having Mr Unreliable hovering around, wondering whether or not he was going to turn up or not. Understandably her support for me and my career was no longer what it once had been—her priorities had changed and Jade came first, now and forever.
Alison and I both agreed that if one day when Jade was older and wanted to find out who her real father was, then that would be up to her. In the meantime Alison wanted to be free to find someone else to be with in life and if that person came along, then she also wanted Jade to have the chance of having a proper full-time dad. So we decided, for the next few years at least, that it would be best for me to disappear from the scene altogether.
I talked to a friend who had grown up without her real dad being around about my situation. She told me that she loved her stepdad, i.e. the guy her mum had got together with when her real father had left, and furthermore she neither cared nor wondered who her real father was, nor did she have any inclination to track him down.
So that is what we did, we parted company and went our separate ways. There was no screaming or shouting, just a flat sadness. As I drove back to Manchester that night and away from my responsibilities I felt a nagging sensation deep in my gut. I’d convinced myself it was the right thing to do and in many ways it was, but at the same time I knew of course it was entirely wrong. I supported Alison and Jade financially from day one but so what? Jade was my daughter and I had decided to leave rather than look after her. Something that I now realise was unforgivable.
Having said all that, I’m pretty sure this arrangement would have worked out fine if it weren’t for one thing—the fact that I would one day become famous and with that would come a whole load of unexpected consequences, including the inevitable intrusion into innocent people’s private lives, which Jade and her mum would have to deal with. Neither Alison nor I thought for one second that this would ever really happen—at least not to the extent it did—not that night in the Britannia pub in Warrington over two halves of lager and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps.
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*Please note, these are in no way, shape or form, personal favourites of mine.
Top 10 Memories of the great Piccadilly Radio exponential learning curve
10 Take calls
9 Send out prizes
8 Prep callers for on air
7 Log records
6 Perform characters
5 Edit tape with razor blade and chinagraph*
4 Operate portable tape recorder*
3 Operate the radio car
2 Operate the studio
1 Present a show
Now that I had moved to Manchester, the radio station completely consumed my every waking hour. I had more or less picked up from where I left off, going in during the day when the place was entirely different from how it was at night and weekends.
The sales, promotions and admin teams rushed around all day whilst the whacky commercial production guys with the loud shirts and funny voices (honestly) could be found in full flow, hidden away in their studios, lost in the throes of creation. The newsroom buzzed with an impressive roster of journalists—many more than you would find at a similar station today. News was very important to independent local radio in those days and many of the stations were home to proper old hacks with the legendary drinking habits to match.
As the days, weeks and months went by, I got to know more and more people and was asked to do more and more odd jobs, working on other shows, more studio management and lots more work in the radio car.
I loved the radio car. It was a Ford Cortina estate with the Piccadilly logo plastered across the bonnet. On its roof was mounted a bulky retractable thirty-foot aerial—a proper bit of kit which always caused a fuss wherever it pitched up.
The radio car was a real workhorse, taking the radio station to the listeners and putting the listeners on the radio station. One of my jobs was to drive it to wherever it needed to go and set it up ready for action. Having located the site this basically involved pressing a button, waiting for the mast to elevate and then pointing it in the general direction of Manchester city centre. A highly hit-and-miss ‘fine-tuning’ operation would then commence which usually involved a quite pissed off and condescending studio engineer back at the base shouting at me via a short-wave radio in a patronising manner for the next ten minutes.
Before ISDN lines became de rigueur, the radio car was one of the few ways of gaining semi studio-quality sound at sports fixtures and the like. I remember all too well freezing my nuts off in the car park of St Helen’s Rugby League Club, while Stuart Pike—now a top voice on Five Live, was attached to the other end of my cable commentating on how ‘The Saints’ were faring out on the pitch.
Sport was also a massive part of Piccadilly’s output and football especially, with Man U. and Man City leading an impressive cluster of local clubs regularly involved in the thick end of the First Division.
One of the most exciting shows you could be asked to work on was a show called Sport on Saturday. Sport on Saturday was a non-stop four-hour maelstrom, packed full of action from beginning to end.
There was so much going on during this broadcast that the presenters only had time to focus on what they were saying, leaving them no time for operating any of the equipment. This meant the control desk had to be operated separately, usually by a technical operator, a rather grand name for someone who just about knew how some of what was laid out in front of them might work—at least that’s how I always felt.
Working on Sport on Saturday was a learning curve like few others and again I couldn’t get enough. The operator would sit behind the main control console where the DJ would normally sit while two sports presenters would sit opposite over the desk at the guest mics. The presenters would then spend most of the afternoon with their heads buried in makeshift notes and rip and reads (hurriedly prepared scripts), just trying to hold themselves and everything else together. They would have the output of the station in one ear and the producer in the other, updating them with scores and any additional information they might need to know or that might be useful. It was a highly impressive scene to witness.
The console, the guardianship of which was down to the likes of me, was not unlike a mixing desk you might witness at a gig, consisting of faders, sound meters, gains of one type or another and a whole host of illuminated buttons with little letters on the
m which either did or didn’t do what they were supposed to. When it came to Sport on Saturday the faders, normally linked up to records, CDs and cart machines during other shows, were connected to ten or more outside sources which were permanently dialled up throughout the afternoon. They were our live links to all the reporters at the local grounds.
The big guns, however, were behind us in the shape of four enormous clunking great ten-inch reel-to-reel tape machines, slowly turning like huge wheels in some sinister Victorian workhouse. They were mighty indeed and they commanded respect.
Each one of the four machines would have a direct input from full commentary of one of our featured games. Now here’s the fun bit—when there was a goal, the operator would have to instantaneously swing around on his chair and thrust a scrap of paper in the take-up reel approximately where the goal took place. It was then down to the pressure of the ensuing tape to hold the scrap of paper in place. Consequently, as a result and if we were lucky, we would have some idea of where the goal might be when it came to full time.
It was then the operator’s job to spool back on all four machines and splice the goals together for the final highlights package—very hairy, highly precarious, unbelievably messy but surprisingly productive.
At the end of a sports show, as you might imagine, there was always a real sense of relief, quickly followed by a sense of overwhelming achievement; celebratory beers in the bar afterwards were often the order of the day.
I don’t believe there’s anything better than live sport on the radio. Sports commentators are by far the most gifted of broadcasters—they are the people I have the most respect for in my industry. They make what they do sound so easy and it makes me shudder with dread at the thought of ever having to do it myself. The excitement they manage to convey is infectious and the accuracy with which they choose their words as the action changes from one thing to the other lightning fast is jaw-dropping—and whilst all this is going on they still find time to be articulate, humorous and even poetic—I hate them. Of course I’m joking.
