by Chris Evans
There was this one character over in the corner who seemed to be knocking back one drink after another and surrounded by people in constant hysterics.
‘That’s Rowland Rivron,’ Andy informed me. ‘He might be coming to work for us—you’d better come and meet him.’
Moments later Mr Rivron was inviting us to join him in his favourite tipple, a rather large vodka and tonic, I can honestly say it was the strongest drink I’d ever tasted. Rowland was also the lucky man who happened to be dating Wendy James, the sizzling hot lead singer of the band Transvision Vamp. A couple of hours later I found myself sharing a cab with them on the way to a club somewhere in Harlsden. I was sat in the front seat whilst they were busy in the back, pausing only when Wendy leant over to pass me a cassette of The Clash, ‘Get the driver to put this on, would you?’ she said, not waiting for a reply. I was more than happy to oblige. This was all very rock ’n’ roll and The Clash were the perfect soundtrack.
The opportunity to find a reason not to go straight home after work was never very far away. During only my second week Prince was due to play in town at Wembley Arena.
‘Do you want to go?’ asked Carol.
This was nuts.
On the night of the concert the record company not only provided us with tickets but also sent a car for us. When we arrived it was beers all round, again all courtesy of the record company; half an hour later there we were watching The Great Purple One live on stage—but of course there was always another party.
This particular night it was back at Camden Palace, a very famous London club which now goes by the name of KoKo. Prince had hired out the whole place for his after-show bash. Prince’s ‘after shows’ are notoriously legendary as he usually plays at them and often for longer than he does at his concerts. Tonight was no exception: he played Wembley for around two hours, whereas he played the after show for closer to three! This was all too much for me. I needed to calm down. Two weeks into my time in London and I was losing my focus—literally. I had never drunk so much in my life
Somewhere in amongst all this revelry Radio Radio had launched on to the airwaves, whilst in the process also adding yet more famous names to its on-air roster. Jonathan Ross had agreed to host two one-hour slots a week—this was in 1989 by the way! Jonathan was the new kid on the block on television, he was the king of late-night cool on Channel Four and quite rightly too—he was very very good and very very different to anything I had seen before. His show, The Last Resort, was by far my favourite on TV. Apparently Radio Radio had to offer him thousands of pounds per show to come and work for us back then—little did I imagine ten years later I would be paying him, albeit nowhere near as much, to come and work for me.
Steve Davis was another well-known name on our schedule—yes, that’s right, Steve Davis, the snooker player. We signed him up to host a specialist soul music show. Steve is a massive soul fan—so much so, he bought up all the rights to his favourite record label.
The best part of working with Steve was going to the pub over the road afterwards for a pint of lager and a game of pool. He was still at the top of his game at the time and was more than happy to take anyone on. I only played against him once. I don’t think it’s up there with his most memorable confrontations, but I’ll never forget it. I did manage to pot two balls, but accidentally and straight from the break, after which Steve came on and cleared up. I wouldn’t have wished it any other way.
A lot of my working hours now shifted to night time when we were broadcasting. This was no bad thing—at least my liver and I didn’t think so, we were both glad of the break. I was now embracing my new role in production and was loving every second. I was also about to discover the art of ‘talent management’.
* * *
*After a much publicised and acrimonious split with his brother Mike, Bernie hosted several television shows including Make me Laugh which kick-started the career of comedian Brian Conley. He also hosted the long-running ITV quiz show Whose Baby? in the mid ’80s, which he took over from Leslie Crowther. It was during this period that he teamed up with his St Bernard dog, the aforementioned Schnorbitz, whom he both owned and trained himself. Several years before Schnorbitz’s passing—the episode Bernie was so insistent on announcing on my radio show—the dog had almost come to grief when he famously fell into the swimming pool at the home of the actor Terry Scott, only to be rescued by none other than Barbara Windsor. In 1991, on 4 May, Star Wars Day—May the 4th Be With You—Bernie went to rejoin Schnorbitz in that great kennel in the sky. Happily, before he did so Bernie also made peace with his brother Mike, though they never worked together again.
Top 10 Legends I Have Worked With
10 Dudley Moore (The Big Breakfast)
9 Jools Holland (Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush)
8 Michael Caine (TFI Friday)
7 Paul McCartney (TFI Friday)
6 The Stones (made a documentary movie with them in the States)
5 Cher (I once spent twelve hours in bed with her shooting some skits)
4 Helen Mirren (another sketch for TFI)
3 Peter O’Toole (TFI Friday)
2 U2 (several times, two notably—more about those later)
1 The Dude (Radio Radio)
Sara had now moved down to London and we’d rented ourselves a flat just off the Camden Road. We couldn’t have been happier, we were back together and still very much in love.
Originally from Buckinghamshire, Sara already knew loads of people in London, including her best friend who lived just down the road from us in a mansion block in Swiss Cottage. She was thrilled to be back within spitting distance of her old pal and had no problem when it came to finding a job in news, securing a position even before she arrived; not only was she highly intelligent but she had a beautiful announcing voice as well. On top of this she spoke no fewer than five languages—three of them fluently! Alas, though, London and our new lives would ultimately prove to be too much for our relationship and within a year Sara and I would go our separate ways. I would continue to dive head first into my career while Sara went to live in France via a brief spell in Norwich of all places.
For the time being, however, life both at work and at home continued to be exciting and stimulating, although it was quickly becoming evident that, as a business concern, Radio Radio was about as much use as a glove puppet without a hand up its bottom. It was becoming ever more apparent that nobody either knew or cared about satellite radio—and probably never would. It was also clear that we were mostly broadcasting to ourselves, a fact that didn’t sit well with some of the more well-known presenters—one in particular as I was about to find out.
In those first few weeks I had impressed my new bosses enough to be given a contract and was now on twice what I had been for presenting in Manchester for producing in London. With my new title of junior producer and more money, came more responsibility: I would now be solely responsible for the production of several of our shows.
I have highlighted the word ‘production’ because this can mean many different things depending on the situation. With some shows there’s little or nothing to produce, the DJ knows exactly what he’s doing and anyone trying to help will only end up getting in his way. The most useful thing for a producer to do in this case is to keep as low a profile as possible.
This was one such show.
The DJ concerned was more than capable to say the least when it came to being on the radio. He was and still is an extremely well-respected name in broadcasting—a legend in fact—but at Radio Radio he knew no one was listening and even though, like everyone else, he was being paid a small fortune to work there, he was not happy—this is not what he did, he was not on the radio to broadcast to no one regardless of the size of the cheque. He was also a realist. He hated bullshit and everything and everyone that went with it.
So I’m sat behind the glass in the control room one night and it’s like one o’clock in the morning. Now the week before I had met a man called Tim Bla
ckmore, a very highly respected producer and another legend in the radio world. Tim was the person who taught me the mark of a good producer was to understand the person they were working with and then provide them with whatever they needed to perform at their best. If all that amounted to was giving them space and grabbing them a cup of coffee every now and again—then so be it. My guy was one of these guys: apart from a polite hello when he arrived and a genial goodbye when he left, plus the aforementioned odd coffee in between, there was nothing else he either wanted or needed from me.
I didn’t mind, I was just happy to watch him work. He was a maestro, an economy of words being at the heart of his style. Not that he was lazy, it was just that he could achieve more with less—the finest of arts. But then there’s less and then there’s even more than less before less becomes so little it’s nothing—and this is what was about to happen.
The Dude (not his real name, but one I have chosen to use for the purposes of this story) puts on an album track and then tells me he’s going to the loo—‘nothing strange there’, I thought, and as the album track was by no means short, everything looked like it was going to be OK. When the track reached halfway, after three or four minutes, we were still OK and although I wasn’t yet concerned, I was beginning to become a little intrigued as to where my guy was.
Three minutes later and I’m very concerned. If anything went wrong on this show that I could have stopped but didn’t, I guessed that I was gonna get fired—and me getting fired was not an option.
Now bearing in mind my guy and his ‘style’ I am still reluctant to do anything about the situation because he is the man and he knows this game inside out and one second before the song ends—you just know he’s gonna slide back into the studio, slip back down into his chair before opening the microphone and no doubt giving us all another few choice words of infinite wisdom. If I was to do anything to stop that happening—getting in his way, ruining his karma or doing anything else that might put him off—I would be guilty of upsetting his cool, a crime for which he had been known to go absolutely ballistic.
I was frightened, I have to admit. I was frightened of the situation and I was frightened of The Dude. I was so confused as to what to do, I didn’t do anything at all and as the track faded out, the transmission monitor fell silent. I had failed to avert the ‘dead air’ situation that was now occurring. There was now nothing on the radio and, as I’m sure you’re aware, this is not generally what the radio is for. The shit was about to hit the fan, the vast majority of it I suspected heading right my way. The Dude was still nowhere to be seen. After several seconds, during which I was frozen with the prospect of my impending doom—the next track started—at which point I began to feel physically sick…
Alright, so now the ship had begun to sink, we had approached the iceberg and I, as captain, had failed to take any evasive action whatsoever. Anything that happened from now on would be all my fault. I had to do something and quickly—suddenly all my feelings of hesitation and uncertainty abated—replaced instantly by pure fear, the fear of imminent unemployment and a one-way ticket back to nowhere.
I flung open the control room door and sprinted off down the corridor towards the toilets where I hurtled through the door, panting with anxiety, I scanned the urinals—they were all vacant, ‘Of course they are, you dick,’ I heard a voice in my head shouting—‘no one has an eight-minute piss!’ I rounded the corner past the sinks to check out the cubicles, skidding on the tiles as I did so.
All the cubicle doors were either open or ajar, all that is except one…Upon further inspection I could see the red mark on the lock signifying that this cubicle was indeed engaged and seeing as there was only me and The Dude in the whole of the building, I felt safe to assume it was probably The Dude that was inside.
I stopped and stared at the door, suddenly there was an eerie calm as I noticed cigarette smoke rising gently from inside.
‘Shit, fuck, fuck, shit, what do I do now, what in Christ’s name do I say? This is ridiculous.’ My thoughts were running wild, the music from the next track of the album taunting me as it piped through the crappy old speaker mounted in the ceiling.
I stood there stock still, staring at the door, wanting to cry but at the same time wondering what the hell to do next. Indecision becoming a new habit that I was quickly going to have to break, it was doing me no good at all. Thankfully I didn’t have to procrastinate too long. The Dude was about to speak.
‘Hey kid…is that you?’ he drawled.
‘Er…yes, yes it is,’ I replied (who the fuck else did he think it was?)
‘I know why you’re here,’ he went on. ‘You’re here to get me off this john and back into that studio. Well, let me tell you, I ain’t goin’. There’s nobody listening out there and that’s not what I do, so I’m gonna stay in here for a while until I feel like coming out again.’
I had to tell him the score—this was a monumentally important moment to me.
‘But you can’t,’ I said, ‘you just can’t—you’ve got to get back in there.’ There was a pause before another drawl emanated from inside the cubicle.
‘Give me one good reason why I should come out, kid, and I promise you, as sure as eggs is eggs, if you can I will, but here’s the thing—there ain’t none. You know that and I know that, this whole station is a crock of bull.’
Of course he had a point and if I’d been him I might well have thought the same thing. He didn’t need to do this for a second but I definitely needed him to do this and I needed him to do it pretty fucking quickly. When all else fails, how about the plain old truth? This is all I had left to bargain with.
‘Dude, if you don’t get back in that studio and say something, I will lose my job and I really need this job—I need it like you have no idea.’
Again there was a pause, maybe five or ten seconds and then:
‘Ahhh—shoot, come on kid, don’t lay that one on me, now you’re making me feel bad.’
‘I don’t mean to make you feel bad, Dude, honest I don’t but it’s the truth. If you don’t come out they’ll sack one of us and it isn’t going to be you, it’s going to be me and then I’ll be fucked.’ I wasn’t exaggerating, I was deadly serious.
Again I awaited a response.
‘Shit kid…I didn’t ever think you were gonna say something like that…do you really think they’d do such a thing?’
‘In a heartbeat,’ I replied
‘Man…’ he sighed.
I could have said something else at this point but there was nothing left to say. All I could do now was hope The Dude would take pity on me. I anxiously awaited his verdict with regards to my fate. After a few seconds I could hear the sound of various activities taking place behind the door. The chink of a belt buckle, the zipping up of a fly, along with the random grunts and groans that usually accompany such a process, culminating in an explosion of water flushing down the pan.
Seconds later the lock snapped open and out strutted The Dude. He was still in no mood to be hurried but I couldn’t help feeling things were looking up, perhaps as a result of my little speech. I had been straight with him, a trait I knew he would appreciate and though he was a complex man, he was by no means a bad man. His beef was with the bosses and the terminal plight of the radio station, not with me, a junior member of staff and my fight for survival.
Without looking at me he went over to the sinks to splash his hands and face with water. After checking himself in the mirror he turned in my direction, he had a little speech of his own.
‘Alright kid,’ said The Dude resolutely, ‘you got me. Go back to the studio, I’ll be there in a minute.’
‘Before the end of the track?’ I chirped excitedly.
‘Sure, before the end of the track—now go and chill—and hey, none of this never happened unless somebody says it did and even if they do, it still didn’t happen—the lock on the john got stuck, you came to get me and somewhere in between we figured it out.’
At tha
t moment I could have kissed him. Before the end of the second track, the Dude was back in front of his microphone in time for the next link.
As it turned out, no one noticed the gap in between the tracks or even the fact that both songs were from the same album.
The Dude was right. There really was no one listening.
Top 10 Books that Have Inspired Me and at Times Kept Me Sane
10 Marcus Aurelius—Meditations
9 Deepak Chopra—The Path to Love
8 The Dalai Lama—The Art of Happiness
7 Bertrand Russell—The Conquest of Happiness
6 Alain de Botton—Essays on Love
5 Charles Dickens—A Christmas Carol
4 Ernest Hemingway—The Old Man and The Sea
3 Lao Tsu—The Way
2 Bernie Brillstein—Where Did I Go Right?
1 Sam Goldwyn—The Goldwyn Touch
Inevitably Radio Radio tanked as we all suspected it would and with it the hopes and dreams of satellite radio for ever, but hey, this was London so we had a party anyway. This city really was a strange place.
After Radio Radio disbanded, all the staff went their separate ways whereas I just went the one way—back to the flat Sara and I had rented in Camden. Only three months into our new lives in London and once again Sara found herself in the company of a boyfriend who didn’t have a job, but as always she continued to be brilliant, beautiful and totally behind me 100 per cent. She helped me prepare some new CVs, I sent them off and rekindled my old pastime of staring at our phone, willing it to ring. I had learnt a lot in the last couple of months, had mixed with some of the greats of my profession, but once again I was out of work and felt things going cold. I wanted more of the same and I was willing to do practically anything to help make that happen.
