Memoirs of a Fruitcake Read online

  CHRIS

  EVANS

  MEMOIRS OF A FRUITCAKE

  The Wilderness Years 2000–2010

  (plus a bit before but it didn’t sound as good)

  Dedication

  To my mum Minnie, my daughter Jade, my son Noah and most of all to my wife Natasha, who put up with me spending six months in the garage with my past instead of spending six months in the house with the present.

  And to my balls, which thankfully I still have after Tash capitulated on her threat to cut them off if I hadn’t finished this book before our summer holidays in Portugal, something I failed spectacularly to do.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction: Top 10 Highlights of My Tale So Far

  Part One: Memoirs of a Fruitcake

  Top 10: ‘Turns’ I Have Employed

  Top 10: Things a Proprietor Should Never Do

  Top 10: Crazy Things to Do With Your Money

  Top 10: Must Haves When I Built My Dream House

  Top 10: Restaurants I’ll Never Forget

  Top 10: Unforgettable Showbiz Moments

  Top 10: Things That Come in a Bottle

  Top 10: Perks I Gave Out as a Boss

  Top 10: Dodgy Decisions I Have Made

  Top 10: Ways Drinking too Much Leads to Fooling Yourself

  Top 10: Quotes to Get You Through Moments of Doubt

  Top 10: Things Drinking Can Destroy

  Top 10: Facts About Sleep

  Top 10: Bad Things That Can Happen When You’re Drunk

  Top 10: Things People Often Think I Am But I’m Not

  Plates 1

  Part Two: When Billie Met Chris

  Top 10: Ways to Know You’re in Love

  Top 10: Fab Hotels I’ve Stayed in

  Top 10: Things That Make a Wedding Brilliant

  Top 10: Really Bad Career Moves that I Have Experienced

  Top 10: Reasons Why I Love California

  Top 10: Celebrity Encounters

  Top 10: Great Things to Do with Your Money

  Top 10: Visionaries

  Top 10: Things I Love About Britain

  Top 10: Turkeys I Have been Involved in

  Top 10: Things to Do When the Shit’s About to Hit the Fan

  Top 10: Saturday Night Television Treats

  Top 10: Moments When You Know You Have to Let Go

  Plates 2

  Part Three: The Return of Radio Boy – Take Three

  Top 10: Things I’ve Gotten Away With

  Top 10: Fruitcake Moments

  Top 10: TV/Radio Jobs I Have Turned Down

  Top 10: Things I’ve Learned About Marriage

  Top 10: Johns/Jons/Johnnys/Jonnys/ Johnnies/Jonathans I know

  Top 10: Things I Wanted as a Kid

  Top 10: Things I Love about Ferraris

  Top 10: Things that Can Happen When You Fail to Confront an Awkward Situation

  Top 10: Things to Bear in Mind if You Ever Get Your Own Radio Show

  Top 10: Most Pivotal Messages I Have Ever Received (in Chronological Order – Not in Order of Importance)

  Top 10: Things that You Learn to Accept as You Grow Older

  Top 10: Best Things About the Mornings

  Top 10: Things a Producer Does for a DJ (Well, Mine for Me, to be More Precise)

  Top 10: What ifs About Taking Over Europe’S Most Popular Breakfast Radio Show

  Postscript Top 10 Things I Still Want to do

  What next?

  Copyright

  Also by the Author

  About the Publisher

  INTRODUCTION

  TOP

  10

  HIGHLIGHTS OF MY TALE SO FAR

  10 Born with ginger hair and glasses to Mum and Dad (Martin and Minnie) in Warrington in 1966

  9 Younger brother to Diane and David

  8 Father died of cancer when I was thirteen and life changed – soon afterwards, I obtained my first job in a newsagent’s

  7 Heard Timmy Mallett on the radio, fell in love with the wireless

  6 Secured job at Piccadilly Radio in Manchester, as tea boy

  5 Moved down to London, worked at BBC Greater London Radio

  4 Was chosen to front The Big Breakfast with Gaby Roslin and Zig and Zag

  3 Created Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush, followed by TFI Friday, for Channel 4

  2 Took up post as host of Radio 1 Breakfast Show, walked out after a year (idiot)

  1 Bought Virgin Radio from Richard Branson after borrowing £85 million

  NOW THERE ARE SHOWBIZ STORIES and then there are stories about showbiz – the latter for me infinitely more interesting and compelling. These are the stories behind the stories if you like, about how the business works and sometimes doesn’t work and what kind of people want, or more often need, to be part of such madness.

  That’s what this book is. It is my story of my madness and my experience in show business. It was always a dream, it’s often been a nightmare, but it’s never been dull. If my first book was the climb up the mountain to fame, fortune and the life I thought I wanted, this second volume sees me diving head first off a cliff and then trying to figure out why.

  In the days when I took over the ownership of Virgin I was a ‘live for today’ kind of guy. I tended to jump in with both feet, and worry about the consequences later.

  It’s only recently that I have woken up to the fact that the live for today philosophy, although often liberating and fantastically exciting at the time, can be damaging and destructive to almost everything you hold dear. Of course there’s nothing wrong with the pursuit of one’s hopes and aspirations but real life must always be taken care of first – or at least very quickly afterwards, because to achieve success at the expense of a single other human being is wholly unacceptable.

  While it’s admirable to strive with energy and ambition fuelling your tank, this does not serve as an excuse to start hundreds of things off willy-nilly without at least giving some thought to how they might be concluded. This is the number one crime of the irresponsible dream seeker whose lives are littered with false starts, broken middles and a severe lack of happy endings.

  It’s better to enjoy happiness and a clear conscience by doing the right things by people along the way. The keys to the kingdom of contentment and a good night’s sleep are only a few decent decisions away. Talent is not an excuse to use and abuse or take short cuts.

  So let’s see how little of this I realised when I needed to, shall we? Because, as you will soon see, having bought my radio station for all the right reasons – things would end up going very, very wrong.

  Little did I know that in the ensuing years, I would enter the list of the top 500 richest people in Britain whilst simultaneously becoming a lout, a drunk, dangerously unstable, generally out of control, almost completely friendless, full of hubris, and the unhappiest I’d ever been. These darkest of days would also see me plumb the depths of self-destruction, usually the more publicly the better and not care who witnessed me doing it.

  Why I didn’t take this journey to its mortal conclusion and how the hell I got my life back on track I am as keen to discover as you – so let’s go.

  Buckle up my friends – this one really is a bumpy ride.

  PART ONE

  MEMOIRS OF A FRUITCAKE

  TOP

  10

  ‘TURNS’ I HAVE EMPLOYED

  10 Chris Moyles

  9 Gaby Roslin

  8 Terry Wogan

  7 Vernon Kay

  6 Danny Baker

  5 Jimmy Tarbuck

  4 Lionel Blair

  3 Melanie Sykes

  2 Terry Venables

  1 Jonathan Ross


  SO WHERE WERE WE?

  Ah yes, October 1997 and I had launched my breakfast show on Virgin Radio – a great gig, except that Virgin’s owner, Richard Branson, was about to sell the station to the Capital Group, whereupon I would be out of a job in just ten weeks; barely enough time to get used to the decor.

  That’s when the highly precocious ruse occurred in my ludicrously over-ambitious mind; to see if I could buy the station myself. It was the craziest of my not inconsiderable list of crazy ideas to date, but if I wanted to stay on the air then I had no choice. After my disastrously self-indulgent, ego-fuelled departure from Radio 1 only a few months before, my reputation was in tatters, rendering me virtually unemployable.

  Astonishingly, with the help of some major financial backers, and with a top team around me, I pulled it off. Two months after joining the station I snapped up the ownership of Virgin Radio from under the noses of the Capital Group, overnight finding myself breakfast DJ and proprietor rolled into one.

  I’d been in a few fairly daunting positions before in my rollercoaster career, though nothing quite on this scale. However, my owning Virgin Radio was only ever destined to be a temporary proprietorship. I was always going to have to sell the station to repay the people who had lent me the money in the first place – a story we will get to all in good time.

  Meanwhile, I was still presenting TFI Friday every week, so my new job of media mogul had to be fitted in between my morning radio programme and the Friday TV show. But hey, I was a young man with vast amounts of energy, limitless enthusiasm and more ideas than I knew what to do with. What could possibly go wrong? I asked myself.

  Answer; everything. But not just quite yet.

  There I was, king of my own media castle, albeit with the minor inconvenience of owing the banks, my investors and Richard Branson £85 million.

  Was I nervous? Not in the least. Not a lot can make you nervous after borrowing £85 million – unless it’s the possibility of losing it. But I wasn’t going there. I was excited and couldn’t wait to get to grips with my new empire.

  In the beginning, before I discovered there was also a downside to being the boss, what turned me on most was the freedom I had to be creative. I was now in a similar position to many of my heroes, two in particular, namely Charlie Chaplin and Jim Henson. I have been a fan of both for years.

  Chaplin was a truly exceptional man, almost more so for his business acumen than his on-screen genius. As soon as Charlie could afford to, he bought his own studios on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, where he began to self-fund and self-produce some of his most famous movies. With independence came control and with control came purity and perfection. He could green-light his own projects and make them exactly as he wanted without having to kowtow to any studio egomaniacs.

  This situation only served to bolster Charlie’s already formidable confidence, and with talent plus creative control equalling power and profitability, before he was thirty the boy from the slums of south London was earning well in excess of $1 million a year – back in the 1920s!

  Jim Henson was equally autonomous with his legendary Muppet productions almost half a century later; the beautifully ironic connection being that he bought the old Chaplin studios to use as his base. My favourite part of this story is that whereas in Chaplin’s day there was a giant statue of his tramp standing proudly on the roof for all of Tinseltown to see, when Jim moved in he erected a similar-sized statue of Kermit the Frog. And best of all – in homage to the studio’s former illustrious owner – Henson also dressed the world’s favourite amphibian as Chaplin’s tramp, complete with black suit, funny shoes, cane and bowler hat. This cleverest of tributes can still be seen atop the studio roof today.

  With thoughts like these racing through my mind, I couldn’t help feeling inspired by the massive opportunities that lay ahead of me. I too owned my own company, the Ginger Media Group, consisting now of a television production arm – Ginger Productions, which made TFI Friday – and a radio station. I also had a five-year lease on my own television studio, and I was surrounded by producers, writers and people who could make things happen at a moment’s notice.

  Almost straight away I decided to take advantage of my new-found freedom.

  It was a Saturday morning and I’d just been for a run. Having returned home a little sweaty I decided to treat myself to a few bubbles and a good old soak – I love the lure of the lather. I lay there luxuriating and listening to one of our competitors, broadcasting that it was the first day of the footy season and how we should all be lapping it up.

  The presenter and his various contributors sounded progressively more ebullient, and as the show went on, the more I felt we were missing out as my station had little if anything to do with football. This was a big day for millions of people and we were not part of it.

  ‘Hang on a minute, I don’t need to feel like this anymore,’ I thought. ‘I own the damn radio station, I can do anything I want and I don’t have to ask anyone’s permission.’

  I jumped out of the bath, rang the studio and told the DJ who was currently on air to inform the guy who followed him that he could have the afternoon off. I was on my way in and I would be presenting our new Saturday afternoon sports and music show.

  ‘Really, what shall I say it’s called?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, er – hang on a sec, I’ll ring you back with that.’

  I hadn’t considered a title. Two minutes later I was back on the phone.

  ‘Tell him – and the listeners whilst you’re at it – that the new show is called Rock and Roll Football. Music and footy all the way till final score. It does exactly what it says on the tin.’

  After making a quick cup of tea and throwing on some clothes, I began a ring round of the biggest footie heads I knew and asked them to come and help me. To a man they obliged, although they had little idea as to what exactly they might be helping me with.

  That afternoon we launched one of the most straightforward shows I have ever been involved in. All we did was play music whilst watching Sky Sports Soccer Saturday with the sound down. Every time there was a goal we let our listeners know where it had occurred and who had scored it, then it was back to the music. At half-time we would have a quick ‘round the grounds’ catch-up, also featuring different halftime treats from different clubs; curries, kebabs, pork pies, pasties and whatever else fans were munching on.

  Come five o’clock we presented our own slapdash version of the classified results, followed by any breaking footie stories, followed by half an hour of going-out music, which was exactly what we had intended to do the second the original programme had come off air.

  Rock and Roll Football remained on air every Saturday afternoon during the football season until 2008 – almost a decade after I had left the radio station, picking up some pretty hefty sponsors along the way. And all because of a sweaty jog resulting in me needing a bath and a few bubbles.

  As my reign as boss continued, my creative freedom quickly extended to hiring new talent that I thought might strengthen our line-up. My first top-three signings were ex-England football manager Terry Venables, BRMB’s Harriet Scott and the über-famous Jonathan Ross.

  Because Rock and Roll Football had been an instant hit, I decided to start the sporting theme earlier on in the schedule and asked El Tel to co-host a football phone-in at midday on Saturday.

  Terry was another hero of mine who had since become a pal. We first met in a local wine bar, when he let me into the secret of how he set about organising the England team to trounce Holland 4-1 at Wembley during Euro 96. He swore me to secrecy, so all I can say is it was simple but genius. Now I wanted that genius on the radio. Thankfully, he agreed and our footy phone-in was born.

  Hiring Harriet Scott, my first female signing, was the result of listening to a good old-fashioned demo-tape that someone played me one morning. She had clearly racked up a lot of hours on the wireless, sounding warm and at ease, her style flowing effortlessly thanks to all those little
tricks of the trade without which a radio show can sound so terribly clunky.

  We called her agent and offered her a gig straight away. She accepted and a few weeks later moved down from Birmingham to London to become the new host of our afternoon show.

  However, there was more to Harriet than first met the eye. She was a young lady who’d had her own fair share of headlines in the past – front pages of the tabloids, no less.

  ‘Oh, I remember now,’ I exclaimed one night in the pub when she mentioned the incident in question. The story was all about a to-do she’d had with the husband of a famous female television presenter with whom it was alleged she was having a secret liaison. Apparently during one of their dates she’d whacked him one and given him a black eye in the process. The tabloids subsequently splashed the picture of the bloke and his shiner all over their front pages. ‘Feisty little Harriet,’ I thought.

  ‘And yet you seem so calm and gentle and … small,’ I said to her.

  ‘Yeah, well you just watch it matey, there’s plenty more where that came from,’ she giggled. At least I think she giggled.

  Several years later, when I was no longer her boss, Harriet and I dated for a while – a most enjoyable experience from beginning to end I’m glad to say, and one from which I emerged entirely injury-free. Goodness only knows what the other fellow had done to incur her wrath.

  Jonathan Ross was the next name on my hit list, and oh what twists and turns our relationship would come to experience. Jonathan has been a recurring theme throughout my career for reasons that will become evident as the pages of this story unfold, but I initially encountered him in my very first job after I’d moved down to London.

  I was a wet-behind-the-ears twenty-three-year-old from Manchester’s Piccadilly Radio and had managed to blag a job as a production assistant on a new night-time station called Radio Radio.

  Jonathan was quickly becoming the hottest new face on television with his Channel 4 chat show The Last Resort and had agreed to present a one-hour radio show twice a week for the fledgling network in return for a squillion pounds. Unfortunately for everyone involved none of this lasted very long, with the company folding only a few months later under spiralling costs and practically zero advertising revenue.