It's Not What You Think (34 page)

Well, to paraphrase the transcendentalist (try saying that after a night out in 1998) Ralph Waldo Emerson, there are two types of TV genius—those that think and those that inspire others to think. And to me Chris’ greatest quality has been to make me think.

In a world where taking no for an answer is a short cut to an easy life and a bland television programme, his stubbornness and ‘road less travelled’ attitude has wound a few people up, but it certainly has inspired me into pushing a little harder.

My first experience of this: Bumwrestling.

Very late one night in 1992, only a few hours before the dawn breaks on another two hours of live television by the side of East London’s scariest effluent
ridden canal, and my main
Big Breakfast
item, a 10-minute set-piece involving 15 sheepdogs which I’ve spent a week preparing has fallen apart. So it is somewhat nervously that I phone Chris to run through a makeshift, that’ll-do, thrown-together piece for the morning with a man who collects Take That stickers.

His response? We can do better Will.

I don’t get it. It’s only a few minutes of meaningless TV, and more importantly it’s on air in about six hours. Who cares? Certainly not the comatose students and Sugar Puff-filled pre-schoolers watching. Let’s get through it and go home. But I’d reckoned without that Evans determination to push.

Twenty minutes later, and we’d invented a new sport. And not just a vague thought for a sport. This one had its own rules, and its own federation. So detailed were its codes and the history we contrived that we were able to convince the Series Editor of its existence and that we should spend a chunk of national network television telling Britain about it. I spent the rest of the night writing the sport’s legislation and trying to find a celebrity to endorse it.

And so, at 7.23 that morning we unveiled to the world the historic underground sport of Bumwrestling. A sporting, er, ring had been built outside, competitors and a ref in bespoke outfits were ready. Chris explained the rules in hushed tones, and we brought out an expert in the sport, Olympic legend Tessa Sanderson, who in reality had been briefed in the car on the way to Bow. And then, a bout. The competitors bent over, derrière à derrière, and on the referee’s whistle, pushed. A few minutes of straining thighs later one bum athlete had been projected from the circle and it was over. Yes we had lied to the nation, but surely it was more entertaining than what was on
GMTV
at the same time.

So here’s to Bumwrestling, the sport that taught me to think a bit more. And surely a sport Britain can win medals at in 2012.

Thanks Christopher. To cab drivers everywhere: he’s a brilliant producer, a good friend, is inventive, funny, a true original and though he might drive you nuts, stick with it—it’s worth it.

I first met Chris a rather scary two decades ago
when he worked with Jonathan Ross at Radio Radio—a company we at Virgin owned (we nicked the name from CBS in the US, sorry, it was a totally original idea and just a coincidence). In any case, I got to know him a few years later when he started his stellar on-air radio career at GLR, and it was obvious from that point on the boy had talent, and lots of it.

Like any brilliant inventor and engineer, Chris has an insatiable appetite for understanding how things work and for creating. His interests are broad, but nowhere is his skill more apparent than in media, where his natural abilities are well documented. He just gets it…so much more than almost anyone else.

Chris is my friend, and I’d like to think the feeling is mutual. However, no matter how many people come up to him on the streets (and there are always lots—many far more visually appealing than me), Chris has a great ability to make
you feel special and as if you are the most important one. (I have only ever met one other person, (Sir) David Frost, who has this unique charm.)

It’s always a temptation to go back and reinvent what you have done before, especially when it was so much fun—and I’d be first in line for a new edition of
TFI Friday
(loved that show)—but Chris certainly subscribes to the school of thought that is all about looking forward, and that is a great attitude. The best is (always) yet to come.

Mr Evans, you deserve everything. However, you are a lucky bastard to have such a lovely wife and son, fab car, etc…!

I am a very lucky man.
I have spent 20 years working in show business. I have had the most incredible experiences and as a result I met my gorgeously captivating wife Eve, the extraordinary mother of my three beautiful children.

And you, Chris Evans, are one of a handful of people (by my reckoning there are five) who made the life I enjoy possible, by showing me what happened if you reached down into the depths of yourself and settled for nothing else than giving your absolute all and bringing out the best of everybody around you each and every day.

I first met you in October 1989. A very nice man called Trevor Dann had helped me organise a debate entitled ‘Rock and Roll Has Lost Its Balls’ at The Oxford Union in the summer of 1988.

In October 1989 I called him out of the blue on the pretext of finding out how to get on record companies white label mailing lists to help my job as a nightclub DJ. The banks and consultancy firms had stopped coming to universities to hire 21-year-olds like me that year because of Norman Lamont’s Black Monday, and I had always kind of known that that kind of job wasn’t for me anyway.

Trevor said, ‘Come down to GLR. Have a look round and see what you think.’ I did and during my tour he said, ‘I want you to meet somebody. He’s from up north. He’s Emma Freud’s producer and I think he’s going to become a huge star. He has his first show for us on air tonight and I need somebody to answer his phones.’

You looked up and said ‘Hi’. That’s all you said. Nothing else. I hung around slightly in awe of where I was and who we shared our office with ( Janice Long, Johnnie Walker, Emma Freud and Nick Abbot). When you went on air that night at 7.30 I fell headlong in love. With you, with the idea you could do this thing for a living and with the adrenal pleasure hit of answering a phone, prepping a caller and hearing them on air 30 seconds later.

I had to go back to university nine months later and cram my degree in. You’re weren’t too happy about that I know. And I got pretty fucked off with you when I couldn’t get a job on
Power Up
in Heathman’s Yard after my finals. But I had my life and you had yours and I always think that’s why we were so good for each other.

Cut to January 1992 and I had just landed my first TV job at Planet 24 as development writer. Charlie Parsons passed by my desk, a whir of frenzied energy
and said, ‘Channel 4 are going to launch a breakfast show. You need to write one’.

So, like a 24-year-old chimpanzee with an Amstrad 9512, I did. It was the show we did on GLR mixed with Simon Mayo’s brilliant breakfast show on Radio 1 and my favourite TV show as a kid,
Tiswas.
I told Charlie it was a bit like ‘zoo radio’: the Howard Stern Show I had listened to when I was visiting a friend in New York.

Charlie had thought of the house and Bob Geldof had thought of the title
The Big Breakfast.
And I always remember them looking at me as they read the first bits of paper and saying, ‘But who on earth can do this?’

I said, ‘Well there’s a guy I answered phones for at GLR.He’s called Chris Evans.’ You know I didn’t know anybody else then, it was just instinct. If they had said somebody else more famous I probably wouldn’t have said much. I was very naïve. I figured everybody in this incredible world of television, radio and magazines was as excellent as you.

You met Charlie and although you were the hottest name in town (I subsequently discovered you were on pretty much every C4 breakfast slot proposal) you shook hands with him and said ‘yes’.

Do you remember that summer of 1992 auditioning for your co-host? Endless run throughs whilst that house was being built? The noise of saws and stuff drowning the shows we were shooting on little hi-8 cams? The final three were the gorgeous Joanna Kaye, Gaby Roslin and the then unheard of model booker and party organiser, our friend Davina McCall.

When the
Big Breakfast
team was assembled I became the researcher on Friday’s show. I sat at home and watched the very first show on the Monday the BB launched. I cried all the way through. Oh my God. We had all done it! And you could feel every day the country switching on to this thing. You heard it on the Tube and in the pub, and you saw it in the newspapers and then six weeks in you and Gaby were on
This Morning
being interviewed by Richard and Judy and we all knew we had arrived.

We parted again when you went upstairs to do
Toothbrush.
I didn’t feel that mad I wasn’t part of that gang—simply because I knew we were different and had separate lives.

And I am so sorry for standing on my dignity for too long. The Saturday I brought my first born Louie home from the hospital in November 1997 I sprinted to the 7/11 on the corner of Chepstow Road and Westbourne Grove to buy a lottery ticket (I realized I was the luckiest man in the world and tonight was my night) and we ran smack into each other, knocked each over and picked ourselves up, turned away and said nothing.

Sorry. That still shames me.

You know what? I’ve been really lucky. I’ve had the most incredible time working with some of the most talented people in the world of television, but it all started with you. And that silly little show
The Greenhouse
on GLR. That’s where you taught me how to do it.

And when we saw each other last week and you asked me to write this bit for your book, I was glad. Truly, truly glad. To be able to say thank you. For the record. Thank you Chris Evans, for everything.

10 things you may not know about Chris Evans

1. He is the only person I know who can make a Ramsay-standard concoction with the following five ingredients: one tub (yes, a whole tub) of Philadelphia (and, crucially, not the Light alternative), one can of tomatoes, one lemon, one onion and one clove of garlic—all thrown together with penne cooked
   al dente.
   Oh, and heaps of black pepper. It’s delicious. Trust me, I’ve challenged many a supreme cook to try their hand at this and they have, without exception, failed.
   
2. Bono’s nickname for him is Elvis.
   
3. He is an annoyingly gifted games supremo—I’ve never known him be defeated by a crossword, he’s dynamite at Boggle, fearsome at Trivial Pursuit and legendary at Articulate. Though when it came to Scrabble, I trounced him every time.
   
4. He is more at ease naked than any man or woman I know—without question, his best ideas come when he is free from the constraints of clothes. In fact, nudity often leads to more nudity—the infamous Naked Parade that ran for a long spell on
   TFI Friday
   came about when, locked in the bathroom for an hour after some heated discussion or other, he emerged steaming from the room, proud and bare, with a lampshade propped upside down on top of his head.
   
5. He pretty much accomplishes anything he turns his hand to…perhaps failure is not an option. Three alternative careers I think could have been his if he’d set his heart on it: 1. Concert pianist. 2. Michelin-starred chef. 3. Golf pro.
   
6. On the flipside, he is a totally rubbish swimmer.
   
7. He is extraordinarily, wonderfully, sometimes stupidly, generous—with sharing, with embracing, with loving. He seizes the moment and all it encompasses—lost souls, dangerous strangers, mad adventures, ridiculous challenges—like no one I’ve ever known. If you’ve not yet been bought a drink by him, your time will come. He will find you eventually. And you will have a wonderful night.
   
8. He never washes his hair but it is
   always
   clean. In six years I never saw a drop of shampoo get within a mile of him. Is that weird? Is he onto something he should be bottling?
   
9. His initial attempts at a rendition of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ for
   Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush
   were so painful they would have prompted tears from Mick Jagger. Jools Holland had to momentarily leave the rehearsal room. He got there in the end, of course, and pulled it off proudly on the actual night, but the rehearsal tape remains safely locked up in a TV vault somewhere—I’m not sure the time would ever be right for public consumption. He later went on to make a
   TFI Friday
   special with The Rolling Stones—it was a huge coup and I was never sure if word had reached Mick of Chris’s passionate homage.
   
10. This list could go on forever—it’s impossible to narrow it down to ten. So instead, I’ll just sum up by saying that when you are sharing his air space—be it as friend, partner, colleague or fleeting, passing stranger—you absolutely believe that
    anything
    is possible. Growing old is mandatory but growing up is optional. Chris’s mantra is that life is incredibly short and an absolute gift, and as such must be grasped tightly because every single second counts. With this comes inevitable risk and danger, but wow, it’s always an adventure. With him I experienced some of the most outrageous, insane, bizarre, scary and occasionally dark moments. But I also had the most fun, exciting, blissful, loving, funny and unbelievably happy times with this fireball of a human, and I wouldn’t swap any of it for a moment. A lifetime of amazing memories—and who could ever wish for more than that?
    

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.

They are to be happy in.
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Philip Larkin

Summer 1987. Ainsworth, near Bolton, Lancashire.
Chris, 21, and living in a tent in our back garden, has hired a video camera for the day and got me to film him in a demo for the BBC. It’s the first time he has ever appeared on screen. Listening to his running order in my tiny bedroom at The Old Vicarage I realise for the first time that he is a genius, but somehow cannot bring myself to tell him.