by Chris Evans
Finally, the second half of the week’s shock radio news was out there in black and white:
‘Evans to replace Sir Tel’.
Now would you look at that, me sounding like a naughty schoolboy with just my surname up there alongside Sir Terry’s noble prefix. This basically set the tone for the next month and kicked off straight away that night when I was the subject of another heated debate on Newsnight. I think this was my third to date; I must turn up for one of them one day.
I tuned in at home to see a man from commercial radio, who was extremely opinionated about me considering the lateness of the hour.
‘Hang on a minute, mate’, I thought to myself. ‘Are you aware that I have actually been working for the BBC, and Radio 2, five times a week for the last four years. Not only that but I worked for BBC Radio for five years before that. In fact I have worked at the BBC for twice as long as I have ever worked in commercial radio, you numpty.’
I had completely bitten but of course that’s what he was on there for. Thank God I didn’t agree to appear. ‘Only fight battles you know you are going to win,’ says a very wise friend of mine.
Following this opening volley, I became the subject of countless other discussions on various talk shows, both on television and radio, featuring a stream of self-declared experts and spokespeople. Suddenly everyone professed to have an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of how to put a radio show together and what the listeners might want to hear.
‘Give it a rest, for goodness sake.’ I was still biting. I’ve been sneaking into studios at night coming up with ideas and practising with record players, CD players, tape-machines and now digital operating systems since I was a spotty teenager. Yet from a number of these comments anyone would think I’d won some kind of competition to be a DJ for a day.
The BBC message boards were also ablaze with many of the more colourful remarks and conjecture regarding my appointment. One could have been forgiven for thinking some of the things being posted there were in reference to the devil himself rather than a new breakfast show host who might not quite be their cup of tea.
All this and I hadn’t even started the show yet!
Back on the radio, from the moment Terry declared he was off, his show seemed to me to take on a new energy, like a champion steeplechaser knowing this was his last outing.
His first week after the announcement was filled with almost continuous eulogies from his faithful listeners, many of whom were renowned for their ability to write almost perfect prose for their great leader to read out every morning. Now they too excelled, stepping up their efforts, knowing in many ways that this was goodbye for them too.
After an initial week of grieving, Terry declared it party time and insisted there would be no more tears, as well as going to great lengths to stress that amidst all the Wogan Woe and Tel Don’t Go, he wasn’t so much leaving, as merely scaling down his duties in order to host his new Sunday morning show – a live extravaganza from the BBC Radio Theatre.
The fuss, and there was lots of it – much more than any of us had anticipated – began to die down a little, and there was a brief hiatus in the first two weeks of December. Of course it was only the calm before the really big storm that was still to hit us, but it was a welcome relief all the same. As Terry’s show moved into its last week, I braced myself for the bumps.
‘Chris, Tel would love it if you came in on his penultimate show. Do you fancy it?’ asked Alan ‘Barrowlands’ Boyd, Sir Tel’s producer.
‘Whatever I can do to help,’ I replied, happy to oblige and appreciative of the chance to divert some of the fallout.
‘Do we need a planning meeting Alan?’
‘Dear boy, what a splendid idea. The Stag after your show?’
‘It’s a date.’
Alan, a very experienced old hand within Radio 2, sensed that Terry and I together was no bad idea – united we stand.
When I appeared with Tel on that Thursday morning, we both said how astonished we had been by the enormity of the reaction to the last month’s events and equally what a relief it was that they were now almost over.
On air we tried to reassure each other, along with Terry’s millions of listeners, that everything was going to be alright.
‘We all have to leave sometime and if not now when?’ was how Terry so aptly put it.
Somebody was always going to have to take over, and he was off and I was on.
Terry’s last day on the show he had hosted for an astonishing twenty-seven years was all about the man and notably his music, something that came across as surprisingly important. Self-deprecating, witty and intelligent as ever, he held it together incredibly well in between the tunes that had meant the most to him, with his voice only faintly cracking right at the end.
After he stepped away from Wake Up to Wogan for the final time, Mr Radio stood on the steps of Broadcasting House, like an outgoing Prime Minister – but one who people actually liked. He was surrounded by photographers and television crews and, of course, hordes of his loyal TOGs, clutching their hankies, most of them all cried out.
‘No blubbing allowed,’ he insisted. ‘I want to leave on a smile.’
A few more photographs, the last of the news interviews and fifteen minutes later he was gone.
I had been listening to the whole of Terry’s show at home and as the reign of the most successful light-entertainment broadcaster British radio had ever witnessed came to an end, I said, ‘Holy Mother of Mary’, out loud as he signed off.
‘The shit is about to hit the fan and it’s all coming my way.’
I must have been learning because, for once, I was absolutely one hundred per cent correct.
TOP
10
THINGS A PRODUCER DOES FOR A DJ (WELL, MINE FOR ME, TO BE MORE PRECISE)
10 Gets up in the middle of the night to be in work for 5 am
9 Receives the script that I type on the way in, checks it and prints it out
8 Tasks up the team (Susie, Day and Joe) according to said script
7 Reads every email we are ever sent and selects the best
6 Receives, checks and adds additional changes to the music running order
5 Sets up the studio and briefs the studio manager
4 Shouts at me via talkback if I mess up or forget anything
3 Keeps any potential panic out of the studio and in the control room
2 Tells me I’m good when I think I stink
1 Does it all again the next day
CHRISTMAS 2009 CAME AND WENT like the popping of a light bulb. Noah saw his first Christmas tree and, along with our German shepherd Beth, tried to eat most of it, whilst Tash was intent on seeing how much food she could get into me before I exploded all over the living room.
It was all very homely and lovely but before I could ask, ‘How about this for a New Year’s Resolution?’ I was back at a very Woganless Radio 2.
It was just coming up to 7:05 am, I was in Studio 6B on the sixth floor, the red microphone light had just become illuminated and I was about to welcome Britain to an all-new way of waking up.
Not that I was nervous – no one would be listening. Not because Terry’s eight million listeners were unanimously covering their ears in mass protest, but because it was the week before we were due to go on air for real and this was the first day of our pilot week.
Hit the ground running, I had learned from my television days. In other words, don’t let your first show be your first show. Pilots are worth their weight in gold, every minute another chance to make a mistake in private before messing up in front of the whole nation.
When it came to ideas for the pilots, Hells Bells (super producer and one of Hull’s finest ever exports) and I had decided to throw it all at the wall and see what might stick, if any of it. It was always going to be too full. With a good radio show really being all about the flow – the cogs turning behind the scenes without the listener being aware of their existence – stripping back became an
obsession.
With each pilot, our proposed new format became less cluttered but still way too busy. We had to come up with a more relaxed atmosphere for the listeners, especially after Terry’s laid-back, sometimes almost horizontal style.
I was beginning to realise there was very little room for manoeuvre within a Radio 2 breakfast show. Keeping it simple was going to have to be the key. The biggest mistake we were in danger of making was, if anything, trying too hard.
By the time Monday 11 January – the morning of our first live show – arrived, I feared we might be so ideas-light that we risked leaving ourselves open to the criticism of not being creative enough, but we could only wait and see.
So, that first morning taking over from Terry was ridiculous in every way. It’s the most important thing you can do to get some sleep the night before and yet the harder you try, the less chance there is of it ever happening – I did not sleep a wink on the Sunday evening. We’ve all been there. By the time I climbed into the car to head off to London at 5.30 am, I felt like I was on drugs.
At least it’ll calm my butterflies, I thought to myself. It’s difficult to be both tired and scared to death at the same time.
Wrong! With no more than half an hour to go, our good old friend Mr. Adrenaline began to kick in, whereupon I proceeded to forget anything at all that might help me get through to 9.30. All cognitive thoughts of any semblance whatsoever left my head for fear of implication in any potential disaster that might be about to unfold. My brain shut down completely, my mouth was drier than the bottom of a budgie cage and the only thing I could still hear was the sound of my own heart pounding deafeningly somewhere in between my throat and my mouth.
Break it down, break it down, break it down – that had always been my mantra for confronting problems. All I had to do was get past the first link and into the first record. Ah now, my first record – that was another hot potato that had the commentators chattering. Some bookmakers had even started taking bets as to what it might be.
I was so close to ‘Good Day Sunshine’ by the Beatles but instead plumped for ‘All You Need is Love’, a positive if not entirely watertight affirmation by the greatest band in the world.
I scripted my opening two links. I had to, I was so nervous that I couldn’t even be confident of recalling my own name, let alone anything mildly amusing or interesting to say on top. I was so dreadfully wooden for that first half hour that it makes me sweat just thinking about it.
I was also afraid to look up, in case the rest of the world was still there to tell me how terribly bad I sounded and ask what on earth had possessed me to even contemplate I was worthy of taking over from the King.
When the show was over, I felt as if I had been beaten up. The whole thing had been a blur, a complete panic from start to finish, and the worst thing was – we had to do it all again the next day.
The irony of all this worry, bother and everything else that might precipitate the onset of an early coronary was that, after the bun fight of the launch day, on the Tuesday there was barely a soul to be seen. When I arrived at the same place at the same time 24 hours later, Great Portland Street was like a ghost town. All the madness of the moment had moved on to find the next circus in town.
I was a mess for that first week and most of the country had witnessed my ordeal but by Friday, it was over. No one had died and it appeared that the good people in charge were prepared to let me carry on doing The Breakfast Show for at least a little while longer.
The media coverage of my debut was unending with pages and pages of critique and opinions dedicated to my oh-so-shaky start. Having said that, no one really went for us, not even the various characters we suspected might.
This spoke volumes to me. The press knew I was more than capable of hosting a popular national radio show and they also knew I had sailed through much rockier waters than enduring a bit of flack on the first day in a new job.
Plus, unlike a television show or a theatrical production, you can’t really kill off a daily radio show with a few bad reviews. No matter what anyone had to say, they were well aware that I would be around for a good few years yet.
Helen, the rest of the team and I knew that quite a lot was wrong with those first few shows and I’d be lying if I said that some of the reviews didn’t affect us.
The strangest and most frustrating aspect of all this for me was not being able to do a job that I’d been perfectly capable of doing a few weeks before, purely because of the intense external pressure and the huge weight of expectation.
I suddenly realised why perfectly accomplished sportsmen and women sometimes find it hard to perform at their best on the big occasions. It was almost like I had to relearn something I had been doing naturally for the last five years.
As the first ten, fifteen, twenty shows were notched up, with some deep breaths and a lot of praying – I’m not joking – all my necessary motor skills started to return and, along with more stripping back of features, the show began to sound a little more like we might actually know what we were doing, each one becoming a more successful date with our new audience than the last.
At the same time, complaints quickly began to dwindle. Soon they were no longer in even their hundreds and the begrudgers who were still bothering to make them almost sounded as if they were losing interest in their own point of view.
With the show now well and truly on the road, the next stage was to dig in and look for some consistency. To help achieve this, I had made the decision to stay on air for four months straight but Hells Bells had some late-breaking news.
‘Christoff – that’s what people who vaguely like me, call me – ‘you need to take a week off before April otherwise you’re going to lose it,’ she announced one morning, towards the end of February. This was by no means ideal, as there was also bound to be a mini rebellion of anti-Evans activists whenever I disappeared for my first week and the longer we put that off the better.
Helen, however, had other ideas.
‘Those still out to get us are gearing themselves up for an assault in May. How about we take them by surprise, you take your week off in, say, a fortnight, we don’t announce it until a couple of days before, they panic and say the first stupid thing they can think of and, before you know it, they’ve shot the last of their beans and you’ll be back on air? You know, a bit like a Formula 1 car coming in for an early pit stop to flummox the opposition.’
This made a whole heap of sense and I loved the fact that Hells had tried to put it in motor-racing terms. Little did we know just how inspired her suggestion was.
Just as Hells had recommended, we decided to leave it until the Wednesday before to make any mention on the show that I would be on holiday the following week but, as it turned out, it wasn’t so much when I revealed it rather than how I revealed it that caused such a stir. Here’s what I said:
‘Oh, and by the way, we won’t be here next week. I’m going to have a think.’
Why I said it like this and not in some other way, I have no idea, but my ad-libbed phrase, ‘I’m going to have a think,’ lit the touch-paper of another huge box of fireworks that was about to go off.
‘Evans in Re-think to Breakfast Show,’ screamed one headline the next day. Hang on a minute! Where did the ‘re’ and ‘breakfast show’ bits of that phrase suddenly appear from? I know I hadn’t used those words. What I meant by what I did say, was that I was going to have a think about life and my family and all the other things people think about when they go away.
But there was no stopping them now, they were off and running again.
The message boards lit up for a bonus session of Brekkie Boy-bashing, with one talk show now asking, ‘Should the Beeb Sack Evans?’ whilst other newspaper headlines shouted things like ‘Evans Reconsiders Future’ and ‘Evans Breakfast Show Crisis’.
Hilarious, I mean really. I was on holiday. No more, no less.
People were stopping me in the street to ask if I was alright and reassurin
g me that, not only did they listen, but they had family and friends who listened too. One elderly lady jumped off her bike, threw it to the floor and rushed up to give me a kiss and a conciliatory hug. Even my next-door neighbours were not immune to the power of the printed word, intelligent sensible people texting me from their skiing holidays in Switzerland, ‘Thinking about you at what must be a hard time.’
The great Sir Terry himself made contact, encouraging me ‘Not to lose heart and just continue being you.’ All this while I was doing no more than catching up on some much-needed sleep, and having a few days downtime with my wife and son. So, what to do?
Well, I have learnt that in many ways life is like golf – or perhaps it’s the other way round, explaining golf’s great popularity. Every golf shot presents you with the need to make a series of decisions; you walk up to the ball, assess the situation and decide what to do next. There are lots of different shots you can play but the most important thing is to play your own game and not get dragged into what other people want you to do.
It was important for me now, therefore, more than ever, to stay focused and not react by doing something silly. I had done that far too many times before and it was time to stop this pattern. I remembered to breathe – breathing gives you the space in which to think – and to relax. The more I considered what was going on, the more farcical it all seemed.
The amazing thing was that not one reporter actually bothered to contact me to check whether what they were saying was actually the case. There were literally pages and pages of conjecture with regard to my future, all based on nothing other than the misinterpretation of those six words, ‘I’m going to have a think.’
But there was more to come, the nonsense factory was on a roll and was about to go into overdrive. I was still in the middle of my week’s holiday when a new headline appeared: ‘Evans Loses 800,000 Listeners in First Month’.
