It's Not What You Think (17 page)

10 Apple and orange

  9 Bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk

  8 7” single, notably Chuck Berry’s ‘My Ding-a-ling’

  7 Selection box

  6 Atari game console

  5 Model railway layout

  4 Scalextric

  3 Chrysler Silverado 4x4 pick-up (a real one I bought for myself)

  2 Bike—the one I was really ungrateful for

  1 A flashing red light at work one Christmas Day afternoon

Piccadilly was the third biggest independent radio station
in the country at the time and having been on air there, I hoped this would stand me in good stead to get another job relatively quickly. Even though it was likely to be at a smaller station at least I’d still be doing what I loved. My optimism, however, proved to be without foundation as after writing to every commercial radio station in the entire UK network and receiving some particularly scathing, not to mention hurtful replies, I was made abundantly aware of the fact that not a single one of them wanted to employ me.

I was living with my new girlfriend by now in her house in Didsbury. At twenty-six years old she was four years my senior and how important those four years can be when you’re a young man of twenty-two.

Sara was a newsreader on Piccadilly—that’s how we’d met. She’d had a fair few cocktails at the Christmas party the year before and decided she wanted to take me home. When the music stopped and the lights came on she asked me to go and get her coat for her and then asked me to wait outside with her whilst she hailed a cab—when the cab arrived she practically bundled me into to it.

‘You’re coming home with me,’ she declared. I wasn’t going to argue with that—Sara was an absolute babe and if her beer goggles were telling
her to take the young ginger kid back for the night, that was more than fine by me.

The next day when Sara woke up (I hadn’t slept a wink all night—I was too ‘excited’ about the whole episode) Sara apologised and said she was sorry but that she might have been using me for a Christmas quickie. She then promptly leant over me to grab a cigarette from her packet which was resting on the bedside table. I remember her lighting it and then staring out of the window as she exhaled the smoke, like a satisfied assassin rewarding themselves after the perfect kill—she was the ice queen.

I said I had no problem whatsoever with what had happened—on the contrary I had had a marvellous time—she was absolutely gorgeous and I never thought I stood a chance with her anyway. If I was a one-off it was fine by me, I could live with just the memory of such an exhilarating night. She offered me a drink but I had to go—I was covering the Christmas shifts at the radio station and seeing as I was already late and had no idea where I was, I thought I’d better get my skates on.

Two days later it was Christmas Day, and while the rest of the country was tucking into their turkey I was alone with a cup of tea in the main studio, having been charged with making sure the pre-recorded programmes that made up Piccadilly’s festive schedule went out smoothly. As this task consisted of little more than watching two great hulking tape spools go round and round and round, my mind was free to wander, inevitably back to the unexpected but highly enjoyable episode with Sara a couple of nights earlier. I was still thinking about this when I noticed out of the corner of my eye the red phone light in the studio started flashing—it was the ex-directory studio hotline. Only a few people had this number. When it rang, it was usually one of the bosses having a moan about something. I checked the output before answering the call; the taped show seemed to be going out fine—as far as I could see there was nothing wrong.

‘Hello studio,’ I said, secure in the knowledge that whoever it was they were not calling to have a beef with me.

‘Hello, is that Chris?’ the voice was deep and wonderful and female.

‘Er…yes it is.’

‘Hello, it’s Sara. Happy Christmas.’

I couldn’t believe my ears.

‘Er, Happy Christmas to you. How’s your mum?’ I didn’t know what else to say.

‘She’s well thanks…Now about the other night.’

And with that she proceeded to inform me that, as she had quite rightly said, she had indeed been using me the night of the staff party but she was now calling to ask me if I would be willing to be used a bit more. I said I would love to—‘A bit more’ turned out to be the next five years.

Sara was an intriguing blend of sexy and sensible. She looked like Purdy from
The Avengers
and had the voice and pedigree to match—she was, as they say, a real catch. She was also very generous when it came to educating me further on the subject of what women really want in all aspects of a passionate and stimulating relationship. By the end of our time together, my eyes had been well and truly opened and it was all very much down to her—she was, in many ways, my Mrs Robinson.

She was also financially independent. After my departure from Piccadilly as a result of the cat joke she assured me that, although I may have had the weight of the world on my shoulders, the fact that I was penniless should not add to that weight. She said money was not an issue—I should forget about that and just focus solely on getting another job in radio, no matter how long it took.

I couldn’t have asked for any more support but this didn’t stop me from despairing as to how exactly I was ever going to break back into the one thing I knew I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I think I can honestly say this period was the only time I have ever been genuinely depressed. I had no idea what to do next.

I had tried everything I could think of including ironically travelling down to London one day to hang out outside Radio 1 waiting to talk to Steve Wright. He had read out the tale of my cat joke and what had happened to me as a result as part of his ‘showbiz news’ the week before, enough reason I felt to suggest he might have some empathy for my situation and be able to give me some useful advice. Unfortunately on the day in question he rushed out of the building with such haste into a waiting cab, that I lost my nerve, and not wanting to hold him up I just asked for his autograph instead. Even now when I recall this story it still makes me laugh out loud.

Day after day the situation became more desperate and my mood ever darker. The phone never rang, the postman never came and the weeks soon began to drag. I still couldn’t believe how dramatically my life had changed in the space of just a few weeks.

I could feel myself giving up. I began to contemplate another life, a normal job—what kind of job I had no idea but sat at home day in day out in a terraced house in Didsbury, show business and the magic of the microphone seemed a million miles away.

We all need some luck, we really do, and anyone who says otherwise is talking tripe. The harder you work, the luckier you get—maybe. But if you analyse that phrase it’s a little bit silly—you could also say, for example, the more you’re born the luckier you get, or the longer you’re awake the luckier you get. I think it’s much more a case of the more decent you are with people, the more decent they’re likely to be with you and the more they may consider you in their future plans. Folks love to work with other folks who are good at what they do but who are also good to have around and are as little of a headache as possible. Having been a boss I have come to realise how rare these individuals are and how important it is to try and cling on to them when they pop up—and so it was with me.

Remember the tall kid from the first time I saw Timmy on the fun bus outside Old Trafford football ground? Well, guess what he ended up doing—he ended up running the whole of the Ted Turner network in America before moving on to work with Mickey Mouse and his chums at the Disney corporation. (Told you he’d do well.) Several years before, however, it was also he who eventually made that old-fashioned big green phone of Sara’s finally ring.

I’ll never forget that phone, I began to hate it. During my more unstable moments I even questioned whether the damn thing was still working to the extent that sometimes I would phone Sara at work and ask her to call me back just to check. There was no doubt about it, I was going slightly mad.

The call from Andy would prove to be the single most important telephone call I would ever receive. Without it I have no doubt my career as I now know it would probably not exist.

Andy—or Big Bird as we called him, because he was big and his name was Bird—was always at the cutting edge of whatever was going on. He
loved working in radio and now television but had no desire whatsoever to appear in front of the microphone or camera—in fact, he couldn’t think of anything worse. Consequently this freed him up to concentrate wholly on production. He really was an amazing energy to have in a studio. Another virtuous talent of his—and he has many—has always been getting astonishingly well paid for whatever it is he’s doing.

Big Bird had long since moved to London and was currently involved in setting up a new radio station called Radio Radio, a satellite radio station owned spookily enough by Richard Branson, a man with whom my path was destined to cross much more intimately several years later. Radio Radio, his latest business venture, was unique in as much as it would only broadcast at night. This was originally its selling point, but would ultimately lead to its demise, with the available audience being so small and unable to yield any worthwhile market for advertisers. For now though it was all guns blazing as they were gearing up for a huge launch, having signed up some serious talent for their on-air team including the legendary Johnny Walker, Whispering Bob Harris and Tommy Vance, to name just three.

Big Bird had been appointed as a senior producer and was looking for an assistant; he briefly explained what was going on and asked me if I fancied giving it a go. He said he was aware of the fact that it might not be what I was looking for, as it was a job in production as opposed to presenting, but it was a job nevertheless and meant I would be back in radio and working with some of the industry’s most illustrious names. He also took pains to point out that the pay was almost non-existent, but I could stay with him for free as long as I was willing to sleep on the floor of his living room as he only had a one-bedroom flat.

I thought about his offer for all of…a second before informing Andy that I could be there within 24 hours. I then called Sara, who gave me her blessing, even though me moving to London without her was a much more drastic step than either of us had envisaged. Still, we both knew it was something I had to do.

After an emotional farewell on the platform of Manchester’s Piccadilly train station, I sat down in the carriage, my vision still blurred from the tears. Both Sara and I secretly knew that this moment could spell more than just a change in employment. I watched as she waved me off, wearing
one of those desperate half-smiles—the only kind you can manage when you’re trying to hold it together on the outside whilst being torn apart on the inside. She loved me enough to let me go. What more could I ask for?

10 It’s bloody huge

  9 It’s much greener than you think

  8 It really is very expensive

  7 The underground is so windy

  6 People walk faster

  5 Big Ben looks smaller

  4 There’s a distinct lack of ‘chatting’

  3 You never see old people

  2 Hardly anyone is from London

  1 It’s much warmer than up North

After being brought up in Warrington
I thought Manchester was big, but nothing prepared me for the sheer scale and size of London—it was massive and so different to anything I had experienced before. London also has an innate toughness about it and a rulebook all of its own—it is the definitive rat race and one that I could not wait to join.

By contrast; Big Bird’s flat was the smallest flat I’d ever seen in my life, albeit the most expensive. It was a one-bedroom rabbit hutch in a place called Holloway and had cost him close to £80,000. I couldn’t believe it, you could buy a substantial detached house in Manchester for the same price. This was crazy but Big Bird didn’t seem to mind and nor did any of his neighbours. This kind of price was the going rate and they were keen to get going.

My bed was a sleeping bag on top of a lilo in the living room—the airbed had a slow puncture so every night before I went to sleep I had to blow it up, knowing that when I woke up in the morning I would be flat on the floor but, hey, Andy was letting me stay there for nothing and I couldn’t have been more grateful.

Andy was turning out to be a total brick—as solid as they come. The first morning he woke me up with a huge mug of coffee and a bowl of cereal, he explained how the day was going to work and that I needed to be ready to go in about ten minutes. Dazed and confused but as excited as you like I couldn’t wait to discover what was in store for me in the big city.

I remember us taking the underground and how totally metropolitan everyone was. I also remember how incredibly hot I had become by the time we got off at Tottenham Court Road. Blimey, I was roasting—London was so much warmer than Manchester. I made my first London note: ‘No coat tomorrow.’

The offices for Radio Radio were in Rathbone Place just off Oxford Street. They were still in the process of being kitted out with desks and computers along with the odd bits of radio gear—tape machines, etc. I can recall many things about that first day but one memory stands out above all—the first person I saw after we’d walked up the stairs.

She was a woman called Carol. We saw her when we walked through the main office door but we had been able to hear her a good minute or so before, from several floors below. This woman was loud—I mean really loud. This woman was the living embodiment of London.

‘Who’s that?’ I whispered to Big Bird.

‘Oh that’s Carol McTraff,’ said Big Bird laughing. ‘We call her McTraff. because she deals with the traffic but her real name is Carol McGiffin, she’s hilarious.’

Other than Andy, Carol was the first ‘new’ person I encountered in London. Little did I know she would also be the first person I would marry.

Although I was now back in the radio game, thoughts of me ever being in front of the microphone again were immediately erased from my mind as this was London, where almost everyone who was on the air was already famous and more often than not a born and bred Southerner. I was from the regions, I had a regional accent and no one had ever heard of me. ‘Brilliant’, I thought, ‘not the greatest package to bring to the table’. I quickly accepted that if I was to make anything of myself here, it would have to be in production. I decided to use what I’d learnt from being on the air to make me the best off the air. I now had a new mission statement—to become the greatest radio producer in the world.

It was time to start learning again and as long as I like what I’m learning about there is no more voracious a student. From that first morning I knuckled down to anything I was asked to do, from assembling tape machines to running out for the lunch and even booking guests, something I’d never done before.

On only my third day, I even took on the role of a roving reporter and was dispatched to a magic shop with a microphone and tape recorder to Charing Cross underpass near The Embankment. One of the senior producers had received a tip-off that Michael Jackson, who was flying into Heathrow that morning, was going to go straight from the plane to a magic shop there. It was well known that Jackson was a big fan of magic as well as a prolific shopper—so it didn’t seem an unreasonable possibility.

When I arrived at the location, there was already a guy there from the
Sun
’s Bizarre column who had heard a similar whisper. His presence buoyed me somewhat. I could almost feel another scoop coming on, they’d been few and far between since my middle of the night confession with Bernie Winters (whatever did happen to Bernie Winters?).
*

After enquiring from the owner of the shop as to whether or not he was expecting a famous visitor any time soon and receiving a shifty ‘no comment’ we both thought it was worth sticking around. As it turned out we stuck around all day. We even stayed on until a couple of hours after the man had shut up shop and gone home, convinced it was all a ruse to put us off the scent and that the man would sneak back to open up again the second we disappeared.

Well, maybe he did but not on our watch. At around nine o’clock we decided to call it a day—and besides, the hack from the
Sun
received a phone call assuring him that Jacko had been firmly ensconced in the Dorchester since just after midday and by the looks of it wasn’t going anywhere soon.

So there I was, having spent a whole day out in the field with nothing to show for it except a new acquaintance with a tabloid journalist, one pair
of aching legs and a tape recorder that hadn’t even been turned on. I thought I was in for a rollicking but nobody seemed to mind. In fact when I got back to the office everyone had gone to the pub. Not only that but there was a note left on my desk inviting me to go and join them. Two minutes later I was there.

‘Drink, Chris?’ someone asked.

‘I don’t really.’ It was true—a pint and I would be no use to anyone. ‘Alright, just a half though, please.’

‘A half please, barman,’ this was not a phrase I would be hearing for much longer.

Working in London I soon discovered, was as much about what you did in the evening as what you did in the day. From the very beginning I found myself going out almost every night. And if Big Bird didn’t know how to get into somewhere, Carol did—she was the original girl about town; she was also not averse to turning up for work slightly the worse for wear, not that she was alone—this was the London media way, everyone seemed to play as hard as they worked.

Within that first week I visited places such as the Limelight Club, a trendy hangout at the time favoured by the likes of Ben Elton and Harry Enfield—I know this because I found myself stood next to them at the bar. I couldn’t believe it, they were both heroes of mine and here I was rubbing shoulders with the guys. Ben even nodded to me as if to say, ‘How you doing?’ I was made up. The same night we moved on to another hangout called Zanzibar where I witnessed the London ‘set’ in full swing. It was a normal Wednesday but these guys were partying like it was New Year’s Eve.

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’.