It's Not What You Think (35 page)

I have known him since Tony Ingham, Programme Controller at Piccadilly Radio, asked me to show ‘some 16-year-old kid from hospital radio’ (not true—he had never set foot in a studio) how the station works. I still see him clearly sitting on the sofa outside the control room with wiry dark red hair, set off by a white and turquoise DJ-style jacket. Goggly eyes. Specs. I discover he has never eaten rice.

Our demo starts with a wobbly hand-held close-up of an alarm clock ringing (
Big Breakfast
?), then cuts to his sleeping wedge-shaped head: my Anglo-Saxon tutor at Oxford believed that such heads are always the most intelligent. He opens his eyes, and a new day dawns.

I am now filming him driving his old white Ford Escort as he talks straight to camera about why he should be on TV. ‘Let’s see what’s on the radio’ he says, pressing the button with a flourish. Supernaturally on cue ‘There’s no business like show business’ blurts out of the tinny loudspeaker.

Accidents always seem to happen around Chris. Twists of fate—both lucky and unlucky. He believes in karma. The unlucky twists are easiest to remember: the gas explosion next to his car; the woman pouring a cup of tea over his head before the lights had changed as he sat in his MG; the swarm of flies buzzing out of his maggot box when we went fishing; the botulism from a tin of tuna that nearly killed him on-air; the Bob Geldof interview he recorded over; Bryce Cook’s taped Sunday religious show spiralling onto the studio floor seconds before due to be broadcast…

And the video? Does this historic piece of film hold pride of place on his bookshelf? Can you find it on YouTube? Is it in the ‘Don’t-Call-Us-We’ll-Call-You’ file, gathering dust in Broadcasting House?

No. None of these. ‘Someone nicked it from the back-seat of the car’ he told me a few days after we made it, with a shrug and a laugh.

There were even louder laughs when, not long after, another Piccadilly Programme Controller, Mike Briscoe, halved his modest salary. Partly my fault, so I was feeling pretty guilty. ‘He must have been really really angry,’ Chris explained as he held Mike’s letter up to the window. ‘You can see the light through the holes where he typed the full-stops.’

Summer 1990. Oxford town centre. A man slumped on the street asks us for money and claims to be P.J. Proby, the trouser-splitting 60s pop star, fallen on hard times. Chris gives him some and muses on fame and fortune, as is his wont. The downs stimulate him as much as the ups. Particularly the slender twists of fate that separate one from the other.

Strange. DJ-ing can be a frothy, shallow, brainless business. But the unknown Christopher James Evans is as deep as they come. The big philosophical questions are what, at heart, drive him. ‘What are days for?’ Larkin asks. Chris, I think you know better than most.

What was it like having Chris Evans as your dad?

It’s hard to explain. I used to get asked that question all the time, amongst other things such as, do you hate him? Does he send you millions of pounds for your birthday? Which I’d then reply with no, why would I hate somebody I didn’t know?

Some people say I’ve missed out on having a dad but what would they know? How could I miss something I’ve never had?

The first time I met my dad I had mixed emotions. I was obviously nervous. Would we get on? Would he like me? Would he want to see me again? But as soon as I met him he put me at ease. He is so easy to get on with and there weren’t any awkward silences that I’d imagined there may have been.

My dad is one of the nicest, caring and generous people I have ever met. He can make a conversation with anybody and never fails to make people smile. I couldn’t be happier that we have made contact and are now building on our father-daughter relationship.

Not only have I gained a great dad but I’ve also gained an amazing family too, who have made me feel welcome and loved like I’ve always been a part of it.

Things happen the way they do for a reason and it doesn’t matter if its taken my dad and I a bit longer to get to know one another than it maybe should have, at least we’ve got there.

It’s incredible to imagine now
but when I first met Chris he was barely nine years old. No, hang on, I just looked it up and he was actually twenty-one. Indeed, now I think about it, ‘nine’ was a lazy and ridiculous guess at his age in 1988. I apologise for that and promise you I will give more thought to the rest of this entry. Still, wouldn’t that have been something, eh? Me, at thirty-one, hanging out with a nine-year-old radio producer? People would say, ‘Is
that kid
producing your hit radio show?’ And I’d say, ‘Yep.’ And they’d say, ‘Well, how old is he?’ And I’d go, like, ‘Nine.’ And there he’d be, all concentration and tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth, cueing up terrible records and shouting at the phone answerers.

No, Chris, as I’m sure you’ve already read, was born in 1966. What he may have been too abashed to tell you is that at just three days old he was already all set to make national headlines when, after briefly going missing, he was found behind a hedge by Pickles the dog. Sadly this story was knocked off the front pages when, just half an hour later, Pickles also found the recently stolen World Cup and nobody cared about the red-headed baby angle any more. But his time would come.

So, back to 1988 when our combined ages were just forty. I had never been in a radio studio before and was asked if I was OK with handling the phalanx of dials,
knobs and levers that would somehow give my audio creature life. Swallowing something hard and jagged, I told them that I was from TV and all you had to do there was stare at a glass rectangle and yodel. A muted internal phone call was made in which, I believe, the phrases ‘milquetoast’ and ‘big Jesse’ were used.

Within minutes help had arrived, as in bounded a long streak of electricity wearing Buddy Holly’s glasses and Rufus the Red’s spare toupee.

‘Hello!’ he boomed in a strangulated screech, ‘I’m Chris Evans. Look, working this desk is simple—you just…’ And then he proceeded to morph into Squiddly Diddly the cartoon octopus as he simultaneously tweaked, faded, balanced, equalised and cued about eighty things at once. Two minutes later he stopped. ‘Got that?’ he said. I whimpered that I might need him to ‘stick around during the first show…’

For the next few months we had a completely magnificent time inventing each other and tearing jagged, boss-eyed raucous radio straight out of the ether.

At the time of my debut on GLR I had already been on TV in London for about eight years. After about our third show, Chris and I decamped across to The Rising Sun pub and as we stood at the bar, holding a five-pound note aloft and bellowing that we were not leaving until we had spent it all up, a couple came across and asked if I was Danny Baker. After ascertaining that they weren’t creditors I confirmed their suspicion. They then asked for my autograph which I, as is my style, proceeded to furnish in the most flamboyant script. Happy with this, they then backed away from us, complete with touches to imaginary forelocks.

Chris was absolutely astounded.

‘Wow!’ he said all flushed. ‘Wow! What the fuck does that feel like?’

It turned out he had no idea that I was regionally, partially famous. He seemed knocked out to actually know someone, really know someone, who signed up to three autographs a month.

His eyes jangled in their sockets. A sort of heavenly choir played trombones inside his head. His mouth flooded with the ambrosia of ambition. I could see there and then that he wanted some of that. He threw back his head and howled a long laugh of excitement at the moon. This, he finally felt, was really going to happen.

The kicker part to this minor tale of self-regarding nonsense is that if you jump forward a decade from this incident you will see countless tabloid photographs of Chris leaving both murky dives as well as some of the smartest venues in the capital and there, lagging in the gloom behind him, is what at first glance appears to be a fat old tramp looking for a handout. In the countless captions and articles that accompanied these shots documenting Chris’ daily adventures this individual was rarely given a name but usually contemptuously referred to as simply ‘one of Chris Evan’s bootlicking entourage looking to glean some reflected glory…’

And that, my friends, is as good a guide to the giddy roulette wheel of show business as I can offer you.

We remain the nearest of hearts, the best of brothers.

I remember the first time our Chrissie was ever on the radio.

Every Sunday morning as a family we used to listen to a show on Piccadilly Radio called
Tripe and Onions.
It was more for children than adults really but the kids liked it so we used to have to listen to it as well. It was quite good actually.

This particular week they ran a write-in competition following an item on size. There were three questions:

1. What is the tallest structure in the UK?

2. What is the tallest mountain in the UK?

3. What is the unit of measurement for measuring the height of horses?

As the rest of the family called out the various answers back at the radio Chris said nothing, we thought he wasn’t listening but we were wrong.

Five minutes later he asked his dad if he could have a postcard. He had heard all the answers and wanted to enter the competition. He took a stamp from the top drawer and ran off to the post box to send in his entry.

The next week we received a phone call from a nice lady at the station asking to speak to our Chrissie. It turned out he had only gone and won the damn thing and they wanted him to appear on the show to accept the prize. They always invited all the kids who won onto the show to encourage other children listening to join in.

After I had gone back on the phone to confirm we could get him to Manchester for the programme the following weekend, a miniature scene broke as it was his sister and brother who had known the answers and they wanted to go as well. In the end it was decided we would all make the trip, including Dad.

The radio station were very good as they gave each of them a prize. Chrissie and Diane received a Spacehopper each and David received a pile of records.

Chrissie was also interviewed, during which he supplied the answers to the questions as well as telling the interviewer a few things about himself. These included him sharing the fact that his hobby was building model aeroplanes.

‘And does your Mum let you hang them from your bedroom ceiling?’ the lady asked.

‘No, she throws them in the bin when I’m at school,’ came his reply.

This was an out and out bare-faced lie but of course everybody believed the sweet ginger-haired little boy and not me, his hard-working mum who bought him the flippin’ things.

Having said that he’s not a bad lad really. I am very proud of him but no more than any of my other children or grandchildren.

P.S. The answers to the questions, by the way, were: The Post Office Tower, Ben Nevis, and ‘hands’.

Plate section page 1, the answers to the questions:

1. Llandudno, North Wales, 1959.

2. The last boy in the line.

I would like to thank my agent Michael Foster for making me sign a contract which meant I had to write this book otherwise I would be put in jail.

I would like to thank Belinda Budge, my publisher at HarperCollins, for being so enthusiastic and supportive, right from the off.

Most of all I would like to thank Natalie Jerome, my editor, who has been incredibly dedicated to this cause. She even stayed at our house for a whole week—overnight bag and all. Nat, you are the best. (I told her she definitely wasn’t allowed to edit this bit.)

Chris Evans began his broadcasting career at Manchester’s Piccadilly Radio, going on to become a household name in TV and radio. With his production company Ginger, he launched and presented the hugely successful Channel 4 shows The Big Breakfast, Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush and TFI Friday. In 1996 Chris joined Radio 1, hosting the flagship breakfast show, which attracted 7.5m listeners. After his controversial departure he then joined Virgin Radio’s breakfast show, eventually acquiring the station from Richard Branson for £87m.

He went on to sell the Ginger Media Group (including Virgin Radio) in 2000 for £225m. In 2005 Chris joined Radio 2, declaring it his spiritual home, his show picking up four prestigious Sony Awards in as many years. He has since succeeded Sir Terry Wogan on The Breakfast Show, exceeding his listening figures, and has joined the popular The One Show as co-host on Fridays.

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