by Chris Evans
He immediately deployed a ventouse, a simple but highly effective tool designed to stick to the baby’s scalp, so the baby can then be more or less yanked out as quickly as possible. And thank the Lord he did, as our baby’s umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck, not once but twice; a potentially fatal complication, with the baby increasingly struggling to breathe, as with each contraction the cord becomes tighter. This explained the rapid slowing of the heartbeat.
Pat performed his magic and had our baby boy out and the cord cut in seconds. How do you ever pay these people back?
Tash was a complete star throughout, and so brave. I, on the other hand, was a slightly predictable dithering wreck, though much less so than I thought I might be. I did have to step out of the delivery room for a few seconds earlier on but when it came to the crunch, or push and then pull as it turned out, I surprised myself by happily hanging out down the business end to see our little fella pop out.
I’m sure lots of people already know this, but when you’ve witnessed your wife, or partner, give birth, you gain a new and completely different respect for her and indeed for all women, especially your own mum. Jeez, it has been said before, but if men had to have babies the world would be a few billion people lighter.
We named our beautiful little baby boy Noah Nicholas Martin Evans. Noah because it’s the coolest name on the planet, Nicholas because Tash had a kid brother named Nicholas who sadly didn’t make it, and Martin after my dear dad – as a present for my mum. When we told her shortly after she arrived at the hospital that day, she instantly became glassy eyed.
Perfect.
As I held little Noah in my arms for the first time, so tiny and so dependent, I smiled a smile I never knew existed. It was as though my son had arrived to tell me it was all going to be alright.
The rule book had instantly been re-written, my priorities had changed for ever. Thank Christ for that. The biggest responsibility any human being can be entrusted with made me feel nothing but relaxed and calm. I thought about crying but there was no need.
Here in front of me was the best-looking little boy I’d ever seen. His eyes were such a steely blue, I couldn’t stop looking at them. They had a quiet but confident mystery, fearless and enquiring, almost wise. Or was it that he was already giving me a look that said, ‘Dad, don’t try to be cool with me, we both know Mum’s the real deal and you’re lucky to be around, so drop it’?
Yep, maybe that was more like it.
Tash was due to come out of hospital within forty-eight hours, but the nurses encouraged her to stay in a few extra days. ‘There are no medals for going home early,’ said one of the lovely ladies looking after her. ‘Stay in a couple more days and we’ll give you a few lessons on this having-a-baby thing.’
It sounded like perfect sense to me, and Tash, having thought about it, agreed. The hospital was so close to Radio 2, it was no trouble at all for me to split my time between work and being with Tash and Noah for the duration of Operation New Kid on the Block. The staff even made up a bed for me in the next room and with the availability of 24-hour room service and even a wine list, this wasn’t exactly going to be a hardship.
Please don’t think my life has always been posh hospitals and preferential treatment, but whilst I can afford it, why not?
When home time finally arrived we appeared briefly at the door to give the press the shot they wanted – it’s much easier that way – before returning inside and heading out the back way to our Land Rover.
Mother and baby were safely strapped in, in the back, whilst Dad was in the front, ready to drive his new family home – a happy man, a very happy man indeed.
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THINGS THAT YOU LEARN TO ACCEPT AS YOU GROW OLDER
10 Turning up early and waiting makes a heart attack less likely than getting up late and rushing
9 When it comes to your body, maintenance is now all there is
8 Energy is no longer a God-given right but comes from a tank that must be filled with the correct fuel
7 Your digestive system now demands respect or else
6 Well-meant advice can easily sound like ‘When I were a lad’
5 Your peers will begin to habitually moan – about everything
4 Fancying younger women equals dirty old man
3 Even looking at younger women equals dirty old man
2 Less is almost always more
1 Keeping it simple is the absolute key
I’VE BEEN ACCUSED BY MANY OF MY FRIENDS over the years of being unable to keep a secret, and they’ve been right. So it gives me great pleasure to respectfully say to you and them – how about that for two years of keeping my mouth buttoned up? While the outside world wondered about when Wogan would become Wo-gone, a small band of us, including the great man himself, knew exactly the schedule of events.
While the delay following Sachsgate was wholly necessary and appropriate, it meant that professionally 2009 threatened to turn into a bit of a damp squib for me. Not only were my services not yet required for the breakfast show, but in my head I had already said goodbye to Drivetime. This farewell could be put on ice for the time being.
The problem for me, however, was not refocusing on my tea-time show but rather what to do with the first half of my weekdays.
I need to be busy, I like being busy, I thrive on it. I’m better at home when I am busy, I suffer from terrible guilt if I’m not and I tend to be a nightmare to be around. The thought of ‘relaxing’ brings me out in a cold sweat. Who wants to relax? Sure – cook, garden, or go to the gym but ‘relax’? No thank you.
I had been blessed with a whole year of unexpected mornings off, so what was I going to do? ‘I know,’ I thought, ‘I’ll get to work on that bloomin’ book I’ve always said I would write one day.’
I called Michael.
‘Can you get me a book deal, please?’ I requested blithely.
Concluding a contractual deadline, and the threat of legal action if I failed to meet it, was the only surefire way of getting myself to commit to the loneliness of the keyboard.
Later that day Michael called back.
‘Several publishing houses are interested in your story but they need to see some pages, i.e. whether or not you can actually write and exactly what it is you’ll be writing about.’
‘How many pages will they need?’ I enquired.
‘An intro, the first two chapters and a synopsis of the rest.’
‘OK,’ I replied. ‘You’ll get it before the end of the week.’
Three days later, I delivered forty pages to him, including what I thought was a fabulous intro contrasting Spiderman’s uncle’s philosophy to that of Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’, which sadly never made the final draft. Never mind.
By the following week, we had a deal with my current publishers and ten weeks after that they had my book. I wrote voraciously from 6 am until 10 am every morning, no breaks except for wee wees and number twos. But again I was surprised by my own choice of subject matter. The obvious showbiz things I thought I would write a lot about I barely touched upon, whereas the things that I thought mattered least to my story ended up mattering the most, as well as being almost effortlessly therapeutic to put down on paper.
Sure, there were all sorts of fears involved in such a personal process, not to mention countless moments when I felt the butterflies of uncertainty and loves lost fluttering in my tummy. But the more I wrote, the more it felt right to keep on going.
So the book was finished – oh no it wasn’t.
My publishers asked me to read it back.
My goodness it was clunky. There was plenty in there but it was full of glaring repetitions, blurred time lines, and pages upon pages of flowery irrelevance and flight of fancy that needed to be excised. ‘The story has to march on,’ I was told, ‘the story is the thing!’
Three months after I had declared my book finished, my editor finally agreed that it might be and when I read it back again I comple
tely understood what she had been after. I did write every word myself but I had a great ‘sorter outer’ who made it fly.
So why am I telling you all this?
I’m telling you because once I had written my book, it was time for me to go out on the road and sell it. This is the part of the process that a lot of writers are reluctant to do and will try anything to get out of. But in my mind, a book is not a book unless it is actually read and preferably by as many people as possible.
And so as the requests for interviews began to come in, a shortlist was compiled. And top of that list? Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Here he was again.
Jonathan has featured in my story off and on over the last twenty years. When he had been up, I had often been down and vice versa. I had worked for him in my first job when I came down to London and he had also worked for me when I hired him at Virgin Radio. Here we were again, but this time the most equal we had ever been, scheduled to lock horns on his Friday-night talk show to discuss a book that would never have been written had he and Russell not made their naughty phone call to that nice actor chap.
Surely, my revealing this to Jonathan had to be the culmination of the interview.
I knew it was important, vitally important, in the interview with Jonathan that I got it right, so I prepared for my appearance with him like I had never prepared for anything before. I had seen some good, bad and downright ugly interviews that Jonathan had conducted over the years and I didn’t want to be on the end of a roasting on national television. Plus, if I am being nakedly honest, I didn’t want him to beat me.
The best way to avoid this, I concluded, was simply to be as interesting, intriguing and funny as possible from start to finish, and not even give him the pause for thought he might need to go anywhere below the belt. I was ready to fight dirty if he wanted to, but I hoped the story behind my story would be enough to hold his attention.
Every press, radio or TV interview I took part in leading up to Jonathan’s show was a practice run for Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Different interviewers want different things out of you, so they were all helping me prepare the ground for the big one.
I call it the big one because that’s exactly what it felt like. While I had been in the wilderness, Jonathan was everything I wasn’t. He was on television having fun, while I was out in the cold, pretending none of it mattered anymore.
So the countdown to our clash continued. I was due to appear on the Thursday of the week I had taken off to go on a nationwide book tour and I went to the gym almost every day, ate really well and drank loads of water. I also bought myself a new outfit in an attempt to look half decent. When it was time to record the programme, I couldn’t have been more ready. I was determined to interest him to death, or at least die trying!
The main guest is usually on last, the slot I was scheduled to fill but earlier that day I had called the executive producer, who just happened to be my long-suffering ex-girlfriend Suzi Aplin. Suzi and I had long since been back on speaking terms. In fact it was Suzi who provided some of the photographs for this book and the first one. I was calling her to ask if she would consider putting me on not last but first.
This was for two reasons. Both Jonathan and I would have more energy if we didn’t have to sit through the first two guests before I came on and, bearing in mind that Jonathan notoriously over-recorded – sometimes talking to a guest for almost an hour – I might well be half asleep by the time my intro was announced. Plus, I had been watching the show recently and had often found myself nodding off before the end, purely because it was so late. I reckoned I couldn’t be the only one suffering from this affliction and reasoned that if I were on earlier rather than later, more people might get to see Jonathan and me sparring.
‘I promise Suz, if you put me on first I will be on fire and help set the rest of the show up but I will be useless if I have to hang around,’ I explained.
‘Let me talk to JR,’ she said. ‘If he says OK, it’s fine by me.’
The word came back. Jonathan understood where I was coming from and had agreed- already a good sign.
When I arrived at the studio I was shown to a lovely dressing room, with flowers, presents and a hand-written note of thanks from the man himself. He even popped in to say hello. His usual forthright self, chatting away – just another show for him, but a huge deal for me.
Not so, however.
‘I think he’s quite nervous,’ said Suzy after he had left. Was she being kind to her anxious ex or did she mean it? ‘No, I’m serious, you and he have a history and he’s aware of that. He knows what you might think of him and I think he’s ready to give you the interview you deserve. Don’t get me wrong he’s not going to give you an easy ride but prepare to be pleasantly surprised.’
Backstage, waiting to go on, I was calmer than I thought I would be but still on red alert, every sense one hundred per cent heightened. And all the time all I could think about was that if it weren’t for Jonathan and Russell, I wouldn’t even be here.
I was … and Jonathan was about to introduce me. Please welcome Chris Evans’ and a tap on my shoulder from the floor manager were my cues to walk out. Generous applause …
I looked Jonathan in the eye and just waited for the questions to start coming. I knew I had all the answers, all I had to do was be honest and not go looking for laughs but let the laughs come. I had a great story to tell and all I had to do was tell it.
I made myself comfortable on his fancy black-leather sofa. After a couple of quips about my greying hair, Jonathan launched into his first real question. The audience hushed, we were off and running. Very quickly, Jonathan dropped all his banter, realising there was a whole heap of stuff that might be worth getting through here.
The laughs did come, interspersed with the applause. There were great moments of tension, a bit like a rally at Wimbledon when no one knows quite what might happen next and where the ball’s going to end up. I had a feeling the audience also sensed something else going on here.
For instance, Jonathan asked, ‘But when you were going mad – didn’t anyone tell you that you might want to take a look at yourself?’ It was a fair-enough question.
‘But Jonathan,’ I said, ‘that’s exactly what’s happening to you. No one’s told you either.’
As the interview continued, so many of the things I’d written about now applied to Jonathan. Were we going to swap places again? We sparred some more and in what seemed like no time we were done.
‘What a fascinating interview, ladies and gentlemen,’ Jonathan concluded, with obvious surprise. ‘And there’s more to come, Book 2 I believe.’
‘That’s right.’ I confirmed.
‘Well, please come back next year and tell us about it.’ ‘Alright, I will,’ I said.
But as we now know, there would be no next year for Jonathan, at least not at the BBC. Two months after our ‘chat’, Jonathan would announce that he was upping sticks and walking away from his BBC contract after the cloud formed by his appearance on The Russell Brand Show simply refused to go away.
Do I think he made the right decision?
For the record, no – but it’s not my career and it’s not my life. It’s up to Jonathan what he does and why he does it, and, let’s face it, I don’t exactly have the greatest track record in the world when it comes to making career decisions, do I?
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BEST THINGS ABOUT THE MORNINGS
10 The birdsong
9 The shower
8 The chance to see Noah and his mum fast asleep
7 The first cup of coffee
6 Beth (our German shepherd) lazily raising an eyebrow in my direction
5 The lack of traffic
4 The weather making its mind up
3 The anticipation
2 The optimism
1 The possibility
BY THE AUTUMN OF 2009 Sir Terry was only two weeks away from announcing to his millions of loyal listeners that he felt the time
was right to say, ‘So long’. There were bound to be tears, perhaps even from the great stoic himself, but one year on from the debacle of Ross and Brand, the train was back on track and T-Day take 2 was once again looming.
We were so close now and, incredibly, after what was almost two years, the news still hadn’t leaked. Would we make it to the finish line without being tripped up?
Answer: No, of course not.
Cue our good friends at the Mail on Sunday.
They printed the story almost word for word. Somebody just hadn’t been able to help themselves. There were so many details they got spot on, their information had obviously come from a highly reliable source.
After a while, you can weed out the stories where the journalists are simply chancing their arm, hoping to flush something out of nothing, but all the other papers could tell this was a genuine scoop and were on to it like a flash.
Immediately our plans had to change, too. We waited to see what Terry wanted to do, it had to be his call. After giving it some serious thought and discussing the matter with his family, he decided he would say something the very next day on his show. There would be an announcement from the great man himself directly after the eight o’clock bulletin.
That Sunday evening, Terry sat down to say hello to his goodbye, to write the words of a statesman-like speech that would inform his loyal followers of the news they never wanted to hear.
Gulp. Terry announcing he was leaving was one thing, but me being presented as his replacement was entirely another. His abdication would be greeted with first sadness, then reflection and ultimately celebration, testament to an amazing career, but my anointment was bound to stir up a whole different subset of emotions – many of them perhaps not quite as favourable.
We had to wait until the following Wednesday for other contracts also affected by Sir Terry’s departure to be signed before we could go public with the extent of the changes. It was a bit like a house-buying chain, as I was taking over Breakfast, Simon Mayo was taking over Drivetime and Richard Bacon was stepping into Simon’s old slot on 5 Live.
