Memoirs of a Fruitcake Read online

  It could be argued that there was more than an element of truth in what I was saying. It had been a great ride, and we had all had a great time and been paid handsomely into the bargain. But as we all know, nothing lasts for ever. This was a decision, however, that had been precipitated by others whom I had allowed to manipulate me and about three of the most important people in my life from the last ten years. If I did want to part company with these guys, it should have been one hundred per cent of my own volition. I owed them that, at least.

  The parting with John, Dan and Holly was the turning point in the post-sale period of my Virgin Radio days. Things would never be the same again – in fact six weeks later, it would be all over for me, too.

  Unless you can write a song, or paint a picture, or make a jumbo jet disappear it’s very difficult to call yourself an entertainer. This is the perennial problem for a bloke whose job it is to be on the radio every day. You are in many ways a charlatan, piggy-backing off the talent of others. Radio shows that transcend this lowly status need things to happen to get them noticed.

  The soap opera of the man behind the microphone was my way of doing this.

  The adventure Bill and I had just experienced, with all the story of romance and escapism that went with it, was exactly the kind of energy that should have been captured and exploited by the people for whom I now worked.

  If Bill and I could have married in secret we would have preferred it that way. To all intents and purposes that’s what we thought we were doing until the paps in Las Vegas jumped out to greet us. Now that the news and images were out there, however, I figured we might as well turn the obvious intrigue and clamour for more information to our advantage.

  To say this thinking fell on deaf ears would be one way of putting it but it was almost as if I were speaking a different language to anyone around me. The Breakfast Show was quickly becoming an island and I was about to be stranded. Three incidents would seal my fate.

  INCIDENT NUMBER 1

  It was the 6th of June, the day the England football team were due to play against Greece in the away leg of their World Cup qualifier. Despite kick-off being over twelve hours away, on the show that morning I was already getting fired up.

  As a result, listeners started contacting us to say the prospect of the forthcoming match was becoming almost too much to bear and they were finding it increasingly unlikely they were going to be able to focus for the rest of the day.

  ‘Why shouldn’t we be excited all day?’ I enquired. ‘How about we stay on air until tonight – and how about the whole country parties with us?’

  It was a no-brainer to me. The papers would pick up on what we were doing and the idea would take on a life of its own. So the countdown to the end of the show continued, and I went on to suggest we hire a big screen, erect it in the square outside our studio and get bands to pitch up and play there throughout the day. How much fun could we have? How far could we go?

  All I could see in my head was an all-round win-win situation, with listeners coming into London from all four corners and the station gaining masses of free publicity into the bargain. Yes, yes, yes, we would do this; we would stay on air for the good of the country, for the good of the human race, for the good of David Beckham’s right boot.

  But no, no, no, we would not do this; we would not stay on air for one second longer than we were scheduled to.

  A junior member of management had been dispatched to tell us as much. This was embarrassing and infuriating – embarrassing because I had already announced our intentions on air with great aplomb, and infuriating because it was a good idea that could only reflect well on everyone concerned. To pour cold water on it, and from such a great height, just didn’t make sense to me.

  I didn’t understand why the powers that be had reacted in such a hostile way to something that was so well intentioned and right at the heart of the kind of thing I was known for.

  More messages arrived from the management floor, leaving me in little doubt that under no circumstances was I to stay on air over my allotted three hours. When it came to the end of the show, there were now several members of senior management waiting at the studio door poised, presumably, to stop me should I so much as even try.

  This was all very incendiary stuff. What on earth was going on?

  ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, it appears our guitars are plugged in but we are not permitted to turn them on,’ I said before signing off, frustrated and confused.

  This was the first time since I had been at Virgin that I had been told I couldn’t do something – without reason. (DC had once told me to immediately cease broadcasting my reaction to a lady revealing her brand-new boobs to me one morning at ten past eight.) Why wouldn’t you want your biggest act staying on your station all day, at no extra cost, to pull off a positive stunt that had never been done before?

  It was obvious there was something much bigger going on here and that this was not about my proposed idea for a pre-football match warm-up marathon on the wireless. This was about control and power. They were telling me and the public who was in charge; drawing a line in the sand, and spelling out that from now on things were going to be different.

  INCIDENT NUMBER 2

  A couple of days later I was taking a quick break to make a coffee during the 8 o’clock news. I wandered down the corridor to what we called the Zoo, an area for relaxing, with tables, chairs and a few sofas, plus a coffee bar in the corner.

  In all the time I had been working at Virgin I rarely drank coffee. I am a tea man through and through, but for some reason on this occasion I fancied a change. Now the teabags were kept in the cupboard, whereas the coffee was kept in a jar on the counter. This would prove to be the crucial factor.

  I stepped behind the bar to switch the kettle on, took a cup down from the shelf and went to scoop out a teaspoon of instant coffee powder from one of the glass jars. As I did so, I noticed that a notepad had slipped behind the jars, as if someone had rested it on top and then forgotten about it.

  ‘What’s this then?’ I wondered, sliding my fingers behind the jars to retrieve it. Having done so, I began to flick through the pages to see whose it might be.

  The book was about half-full with writing but it was not in a hand I recognised. None of the first few pages made much sense either so I couldn’t tell who had written in it, but then as I turned to the next page all thoughts of ‘who?’ were replaced by much more distressing thoughts of ‘what?’

  Specifically what was now written on the page in front of me. It appeared to be an agenda for a meeting. The first line read: EVANS TO GO.

  I took a beat, to make sure I wasn’t imagining things, then read those three words again.

  EVANS TO GO.

  After confirming that those were indeed the words staring back at me, I gave myself permission to go into meltdown.

  ‘Shit,’ I thought. No wonder people were reluctant to interact with me. I was a dead man walking. The notebook suddenly made sense of it all; obviously there had already been meetings discussing my departure.

  I scanned the rest of the page, which only seemed to confirm that the axe was suspended directly over my head. It read: HOW? WHO TO REPLACE? SOONER RATHER THAN LATER.

  At that moment my world stopped. I was in total shock. As I continued to stare down at the page, the words started to grow and grow before beginning to career towards me like a steam train, just as if they were about to hit me.

  ‘Chris! Chr-i-i-s-s!!! Chr-i-i-i-i-i-i-s-s-s-s!!!!!’ called Louise, my new programme assistant.

  ‘What is it?’ I suddenly felt like an old man who didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.

  ‘We’re on the weather!’ This time she was screaming.

  Shit, I was in the middle of a programme. ‘Er … alright, the weather … Yes, the weather.’

  Within seconds I was back in the studio in front of the control desk, still reeling from what I had learnt only a few seconds before.

  From that m
oment on, everywhere I looked, my fate stared right back at me. I was for the chop, there was no doubt about it, yet no one had uttered a word to me to suggest as much. Either I was dealing with a bunch of yellow-bellied cowards here, or they were going to wait until they were absolutely certain I could be removed as swiftly and as silently as possible.

  I have since learned, however, that things are rarely that cut-and-dried, and that people often end up leaving simply because they don’t have the confidence and self-belief to stick around and fight their corner. So many people jump before they’re pushed, needlessly doing the job for their would-be assassins, often in a vain attempt to save face.

  But if you choose not to jump, your detractors have to stand up and be counted, something they are often averse to doing. Those in charge often want change but don’t want to be responsible for making that change happen – in case it goes wrong, of course. People like this try to safeguard their own position and often avoid confrontation. They are at their weakest when challenged and will often back down, so the lesson is never to offer your head upon a plate and save them the bother.

  Unfortunately this is precisely what I was about to do.

  INCIDENT NUMBER 3

  Another show had finished – another show close to what was becoming the mere inevitable.

  After my regular session at the gym and in the sauna, I pitched up with a gang for lunch at a restaurant called Zilli Fish in Soho, no more than three or four minutes walk from the radio station. Aldo Zilli, the proprietor, was a very good friend of mine and a man with whom I’d had many unforgettable experiences. Unfortunately, however, our relationship was not doing either of our careers any favours, as we were often having more fun than was perhaps good for us.

  Six or seven of us sat down for lunch, ordered drinks and said we’d wait for Aldo to arrive before we ordered any food. Ten minutes later in bounced the crazy Italian.

  ‘Allo everybody, ‘ow nice to see you all!’ he screamed. Energy was Aldo’s birthright.

  After much kissing, hugging and more continental salutations from Signor Zilli, Aldo posted our lunch orders through to the kitchen and then came over to me. He pulled up a chair and leaned over to whisper in my ear. He was currently working on a television idea and had just been at a meeting with Ginger Television, my former production company.

  ‘I don’t know what you ‘ave done to upset them back at your place,’ he said, ‘but let me tell you – you are not a very popular boy withHe then proceeded to reel off the names of several people I considered friends, along with the word they had used to describe me (you know, the really bad one that rhymes with ‘hunt’).

  I was stunned. The people that Aldo named had been to my house, come on holiday with me as my guests and profited handsomely from being associated with me, but more importantly, it was the fact that I considered them friends that hurt the most.

  This was the excuse I had been looking for, or perhaps waiting for, the excuse to jump before I was pushed. Foolishly

  I was about to give my detractors exactly what they wanted, by doing exactly the opposite of what I should have done.

  ‘That’s it, fuck them, I’ve had enough,’ I said to myself, brimming with melodrama. I stared down into the serviette in my lap and tried to work out how I felt. I knew that I was feeling something but was it anger, or was it sadness? Did I want to scream, or did I want to burst into tears? Looking back I think it was probably the latter, but as it turned out I did neither. Instead, I gathered myself, looked up, smiled and decided to get drunker than I’d ever been before.

  Brilliant, eh? Genius.

  Those one hundred per cent wrong decisions just kept on coming. When your enemies presume you to be weak, then that is the time to be strong. But I was just about to play right into their hands.

  The next twelve hours were not pretty. I drank heavily all through lunch and became uncommunicative and distant, though not enough to stop me from hiring two limos to take our group on to other venues where I would continue to do a comprehensive job of kissing my career goodbye.

  By early that evening I was completely gone, no use to anyone. Billie and Webbo said later that they didn’t recognise me as the person they knew and loved. They said I appeared possessed. People have asked me since why no one thought to take me home. Well, apparently they did try on several occasions, but I became belligerent and told them in no uncertain terms to leave me alone.

  When we arrived at a bar closer to home, feeling the night closing in on me, I pretended to go to the loo but snook off and out the back to continue the darkest night of my life alone. Webbo and Billie didn’t know what to do. They realised this was serious, but they had no idea where I might be.

  The truth was I just wanted to be on my own. It was as if nothing mattered anymore, like nothing had any value. Drink has a cunning habit of making you feel that way. My life may have been a volatile ball of confusion yet it suddenly all seemed so simple. I was experiencing delusional clarity. ‘Things only take on any importance because we give that importance to them,’ I remember thinking over and over again.

  A liberating thought, perhaps, but a dangerous one too, because it justifies the unjustifiable: the actions of the alcoholic, the drug addict, the warmonger. It wipes out the existence of both good and bad, and gives us permission to rewrite the rules that keep the human race afloat. It is the same thought that ultimately says, ‘Life is only worth living if you want it to be,’ which is only one thought away from the unthinkable.

  It was 4 am when I stumbled through the door of our house in Wilton Crescent – not that I was aware of the time. Bill came into the room where I had passed out, took one look at me and went back to tell Webbo – who had stayed over – that I would not be taking part in very much that day, least of all a national breakfast show.

  And that was it. I never went back to No. 1 Golden Square, the home of my very own radio station, ever again.

  The building that had been the backdrop to so many of my adventures, so many wonderful and exciting experiences, within hours became a building in which I was no longer welcome. With guards even posted on the main entrance, just in case I attempted to gain entry. My goose was well and truly cooked. I had really gone and done it this time.

  The following 48 hours continued to see some of the most ill-conceived decisions I have ever made.

  The morning after the night before was Thursday 21 June. I know this because it was Ladies’ Day at Royal Ascot, an event that Billie and I were due to attend, along with Webbo and his wife Lisa. Bill was so excited about the prospect of dressing up and having some fun around the gee-gees that she had bought a new dress, as had Mrs Webbo.

  I had also contrived to push the boat out somewhat by hiring a helicopter to take the four of us there and back, but, seeing as I was still unconscious in bed, poor Billie had to forego her posh day out. She had to stay at home instead to look after her self-centred loser of a husband who had almost drunk himself to death in a nose-dive of self pity the night before. Webbo, however, was having none of that and, after seeking Billie’s permission, kept his appointment with his wife and flew off to sunny Berkshire in the chopper.

  When I did eventually rise from my pit, I was unrepentant and headed straight back to the pub, where I stayed until closing time. It was the same story the next day, by which time the ladies and gentlemen of the press outside easily outnumbered the customers inside. It was now very evident that this was becoming a very public professional suicide.

  VIRGIN SACKS EVANS, shouted the headlines on the front pages of the newspapers come Saturday morning, and who could blame them? After ensuring all my bridges were not so much burnt as completely razed to the ground, I headed for the sanctity and security of my Surrey estate.

  By the Thursday of the following week, things had settled down with the press beginning to lose interest and deciding me and my fragile out-of-control ego were no longer worth the train fare down to Guildford.

  It was soon after this tha
t I claimed to have discovered the perfect antidote to all my troubles.

  ‘I am going to dig a pond!’ I announced.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Billie, who had resigned herself to my temporary insanity, but was clearly glad that I was at least showing signs of wanting to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere.

  True to my word I marked out a pond and started to dig. I had read that physical labour calms the mind, and carries the added bonus of having something to show for it at the end. It was just what I needed. I dug and dug and dug, and it worked. As a result of my travail, cups of tea quickly became like well-earned trophies, my 11 am ham sandwich tasted like heaven and a simple five-minute break sitting on the grass brought a joy I had forgotten existed.

  Very quickly I began to come round to what a complete arse I had been and, with guilt screaming in my ears, I apologised to my wife for the worry and distress I had clearly caused her over the last few weeks. I reflected on how close I had been to completely losing my mind and began to seriously ask myself why I had so willingly self-destructed in such a big way.

  It didn’t take a huge degree of introspection to see that I was deeply unhappy in my job and that whereas before Billie was around I had nothing else to cling on to, she had now given me the freedom to let go.

  Performing on the radio was what I loved doing most, but for the last twelve months or so I had been doing it for reasons other than those that were perhaps good for me. Admittedly, I had not parted company with my employers via one of the most amicable separations the entertainment world had ever seen but nevertheless, I slowly began to realise that it was probably a blessing in disguise.

  I suspect it was this conclusion that later stopped me from becoming embittered as well as reassuring me that I need never feel controlled by events again. I would still make mistakes – pretty huge ones at that – but I would always be able to delve down deep inside and figure out what those mistakes were trying to tell me and what I could learn from them.