Memoirs of a Fruitcake
Chris Evans
In Its Not What You Think Chris Evans had written himself a recipe for success. He was poised on the brink of seeing it become a reality. All the right ingredients were there: he was rich, famous; now he was the owner of his own radio station and media company. What could possibly go wrong? As it turned out, the answer was everything…well almost.In It’s Not What You Think Chris Evans had seemingly found the recipe for success. He was rich, famous, and now the owner of his own radio station and media company. What could possibly go wrong? As it turned out, the answer was everything…well almost.When we left our loveable ginger hero at the end of It's Not What You Think, it looked like Chris had made it. But things were about to take a very dark turn. Soon Chris’s childhood dreams of a job in radio lay in tatters, and as an endless drink-fuelled lifestyle began to take its toll, he plunged into a downward spiral so deep that escape seemed almost impossible.And then his salvation appeared, in the form of a young singer called Billie Piper.Told with the same wit, verve and startling honesty that surprised and delighted readers of It’s Not What You Think, this is the final part – for now – of Chris Evans’s journey of self discovery.
CHRIS
EVANS
MEMOIRS OF A FRUITCAKE
The Wilderness Years 2000–2010
(plus a bit before but it didn’t sound as good)
Copyright (#ulink_ba78c742-ddc4-5508-abce-4f8b4ea57261)
HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2010
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
© Chris Evans 2010
Chris Evans asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
All photographs are courtesy of the author with the exception of the following:
Plate 1: Page 1, middle left: PHOTOGRAPH BY GARRETT BRENNAN/CPI, CAMERA PRESS LONDON; Page 1, bottom left: PHOTOGRAPH BY GARRETT BRENNAN/CPI, CAMERA PRESS LONDON; Page 3, above right: © Starstock/Photoshot; Page 5, middle left: courtesy of Gordon MacGeachy; Page 5, middle right: courtesy of Gordon MacGeachy; Page 5, bottom right: © Talking Sport/Photoshot
Plate 2: Page 11, below right: Neale Haynes/Contour by Getty Images; Page 12, below: © Jackie King; Page 10 middle right: Jeff Moore/Jeff Moore/Empics Entertainment; Page 13, below: © Brian J. Ritchie/Rex Features; Page 15, above left: courtesy of the Radio Times; Page 15, above right: © The One Show; Page 16, © Rankin
Endpaper photographs © Camera Press/James Peltekian; Getty Images; Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix; Press Association Images; Starstock/UPPA/Photoshot; Rex Features; Shutterstock
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
HB ISBN 978-0-00-734568-7
TPB ISBN 978-0-00-734569-4
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Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN:9780007345724
2016-11-30
Dedication (#ulink_42d0890d-30cb-5754-911b-e823276577ab)
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 (#ue6402e22-6cb6-569b-9efa-228174f545fa)
Title Page (#u454ec668-7885-50cc-b625-c5fdd3e9f40f)
Copyright (#u0ce66cd0-570b-55ae-a052-f244a814db20)
Dedication (#ucf9b88ce-fdf3-5f5d-b620-58268ea8431b)
Introduction: Top 10 Highlights of My Tale So Far (#u36fe6f9a-5474-5e02-ae43-2cff4acea4c6)
Part One: Memoirs of a Fruitcake (#u5a540969-8d22-5049-ae67-03690d4306e4)
Top 10: ‘Turns’ I Have Employed (#u560676d5-da8c-5000-b712-92d41f52c703)
Top 10: Things a Proprietor Should Never Do (#ua08663b1-01f1-5337-bde2-9007f375696e)
Top 10: Crazy Things to Do With Your Money (#ud4984960-1e09-5402-a616-260f4fc339ab)
Top 10: Must Haves When I Built My Dream House (#ufce79939-0f77-5333-8494-8042d0f94f19)
Top 10: Restaurants I’ll Never Forget (#ud2f475a1-b817-55e2-8240-122a02a4d480)
Top 10: Unforgettable Showbiz Moments (#u53672c23-3c81-53c0-a17b-b86a5aaf923e)
Top 10: Things That Come in a Bottle (#u8476165a-60b3-5534-b871-740aa3c81533)
Top 10: Perks I Gave Out as a Boss (#u9db54ab2-6eb3-59b3-8141-0ae63ff64636)
Top 10: Dodgy Decisions I Have Made (#u8a125401-eeb4-5060-8c01-6e074ded36df)
Top 10: Ways Drinking too Much Leads to Fooling Yourself (#u0100b9ab-9ec3-58b9-8d83-dbc1bc516af9)
Top 10: Quotes to Get You Through Moments of Doubt (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Things Drinking Can Destroy (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Facts About Sleep (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Bad Things That Can Happen When You’re Drunk (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Things People Often Think I Am But I’m Not (#litres_trial_promo)
Plates 1 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two: When Billie Met Chris (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Ways to Know You’re in Love (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Fab Hotels I’ve Stayed in (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Things That Make a Wedding Brilliant (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Really Bad Career Moves that I Have Experienced (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Reasons Why I Love California (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Celebrity Encounters (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Great Things to Do with Your Money (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Visionaries (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Things I Love About Britain (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Turkeys I Have been Involved in (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Things to Do When the Shit’s About to Hit the Fan (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Saturday Night Television Treats (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Moments When You Know You Have to Let Go (#litres_trial_promo)
Plates 2 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Three: The Return of Radio Boy – Take Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Things I’ve Gotten Away With (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Fruitcake Moments (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: TV/Radio Jobs I Have Turned Down (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Things I’ve Learned About Marriage (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Johns/Jons/Johnnys/Jonnys/ Johnnies/Jonathans I know (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Things I Wanted as a Kid (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Things I Love about Ferraris (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Things that Can Happen When You Fail to Confront an Awkward Situation (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Things to Bear in Mind if You Ever Get Your Own Radio Show (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Most Pivotal Messages I Have Ever Received (in Chronological Order – Not in Order of Importance) (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Things that You Learn to Accept as You Grow Older (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Best Things About the Mornings (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: Things a Producer Does for a DJ (Well, Mine for Me, to be More Precise) (#litres_trial_promo)
Top 10: What ifs About Taking Over Europe’S Most Popular Breakfast Radio Show (#litres_trial_promo)
Postscript Top 10 Things I Still Want to do (#litres_trial_promo)
What next? (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
INTRODUCTION TOP 10 HIGHLIGHTS OF MY TALE SO FAR (#ulink_72ac8321-2e12-5eb1-8260-36cee538f5fb)
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 (#ulink_1a2f54c9-820a-5c4c-900a-a928a6754c81)
MEMOIRS OF A FRUITCAKE (#ulink_1a2f54c9-820a-5c4c-900a-a928a6754c81)
TOP 10 ‘TURNS’ I HAVE EMPLOYED (#ulink_4c12d7f8-9683-587f-9895-c32dd5530d1c)
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.
Following Radio Radio, our paths had crossed several times since, as I had now become a recognisable face in my own right and had appeared as a guest on his Saturday Zoo show, as well as attempting to collaborate with him in an effort to get him back on television when he’d lost his way a bit.
[Adopt Michael Caine voice here] Now not a lot of people know this but I actually wrote TFI Friday for Jonathan. I was going to produce it with him as the presenter.
I’d asked him over to my flat in north London for a cup of tea, where the two of us lay on the grass in my garden, chewing the television fat. I remember it vividly, second only to the day I asked Jools Holland (my ultimate TV hero) to be musical director on Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush, another red-letter day for the Evans boy.
My initial idea for Jonathan was for a Sunday show based in a church, with Jonathan as the preacher/host, the congregation/audience in the pews, guests in the confessional and music from the choir area.
The Sunday Joint, as I had titled it, slowly evolved into TFI Friday after I came to the conclusion it was probably better to piggyback on the natural positive energy of a Friday evening than try to manufacture similar energy on a Sunday.
The main man at Channel 4 at the time liked the idea for the show but when I declared Jonathan as my first-choice host, replied with these exact words:
‘Everyone knows Jonathan is yesterday’s man.’
This didn’t stop the same exec trying to rehire him a few years later when he was back on top.
As Jonathan’s brother Paul always says, ‘Form is temporary – class is permanent.’ Bravo Paul and bravo Jonathan, for now at least.
After I eventually took up the mantle of TFI Friday, Jonathan’s career continued to flounder but I was always wondering how I could get to work with him. Now I owned my own radio station I could simply offer him a job.
Our Saturday line-up was becoming an unexpected highlight of the week, with Terry at lunchtime, Rock and Roll Football in the afternoon, and Johnny Boy Revell and his Wheels of Steel ushering us into Saturday night. If Wossy was at a loose end, he could do a lot worse than kick off our Saturdays with a mid-morning music/interview show…
For me he is the most natural talker in British broadcasting. He isn’t just blessed with a sharp mind and a quick jaw; it’s almost as if Jonathan needs to talk to stay alive.
The only other person I’ve seen blessed/blighted with this condition is the great Danny Baker, who runs JR pretty close when it comes to the art of rabbiting. I once went out for lunch with both of them. I don’t think I said more than fifteen words for the duration of the whole meal, as Jonathan and Danny went head to head in a conversational clash of the titans. They talked continuously and – for the most part – at the same time. I was sure that neither of them listened to a single word the other one had to say.
When I made the call to JR about coming to work for me it was a really big deal. I felt almost audacious as I sat in my recently purchased, stupidly big, green Bentley parked spookily enough in Great Portland Street, right outside what is now Radio 2. Of course little did any of us know at the time how important that building would become to both our stories in a decade’s time.
As I dialled his number on my car phone, I continued to rehearse my pitch to him as to why he might want to join the wonderful world of the wireless. After no more than a couple of rings he picked up and I launched straight in.
‘What do you have to lose?’ I concluded after I was done.
‘Chris, I’m not so sure you know, radio’s what you do, I’m a telly man, always have been, and that’s where I want to be.’
I suspected this was how the conversation might go and I could understand Jonathan’s concerns. Some television people – in those days, especially – may have seen radio as a step down, but I had prepared my little spiel. I told Jonathan that radio was the best ‘shop window’ in our business bar none; the perfect advert for a broadcaster’s talent. I explained to him that because he was so natural he had nothing to fear. I added that radio also has a knack of easing a broadcaster back into people’s consciousness, whilst also affording them a more intimate relationship with a much more discerning and receptive audience.
This – and whatever else I said during the course of our brief chat – must have struck a chord, as Jonathan called me back a couple of days later, saying he was up for it. He was on air within a fortnight and quickly settled in to become another quality cannon to add to our weekend arsenal of radio fire power.
We gave him a show that ran from ten till one on a Saturday morning. It was precisely the time my old Greater London Radio show had aired almost a decade before, not the only thing the two shows had in common. I called in my old colleague Andy Davies to produce Jonathan. Andy had done exactly the same for me at GLR, so I thought he would be the perfect person to hold Jonathan’s hand – and I’m glad to say I was right.
The happy couple were still together ten years later, doing an almost identical show for the mighty Radio 2 and winning countless awards in the process. The shop-window theory worked a treat; within a year of joining us, the BBC came for Jonathan in a big way, transferring his show lock, stock and barrel to Saturday mornings on their national FM network.
With the power of Radio 2 behind him, Jonathan was firmly back on the entertainment map and it was only a matter of time before the clarion call of television could be heard. The birth of his Friday night BBC 1 talk show followed in 2001 and in no time at all Jonathan was back on top, where he would remain for the best part of the next decade.
The irony was that Jonathan wrote to me asking if I would be a guest on that first series of his talk show, some three years after I had employed him at the radio station and approximately a year after I had gone slightly cuckoo and off into my wilderness years. In many ways, Jonathan and I had effectively swapped places, but the last thing I wanted to do at that point was jump back on the bus. I replied to him by letter saying, ‘Thanks old boy, deeply flattered, good luck with your new venture but I’m not really “at it” anymore.’
I meant every word at the time and in truth never expected to be ‘at it’ again – least of all with him, on the very same show, nine years later, which is exactly what happened.
I did eventually appear on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross in October 2009 to promote my first book, It’s Not What You Think.
However, as you will come to learn, this was a book that only came about as a result of Jonathan’s infamous appearance on Russell Brand’s radio show. I can assure you that if Jonathan and Russell had not made that phone call to Andrew Sachs, neither of my two books would ever have come into being, but that is a story I will return to later on.
TOP 10 THINGS A PROPRIETOR SHOULD NEVER DO (#ulink_65b3ef8a-f4d7-58b3-aa00-8abca465877a)
10 Get drunk with the staff
9 Think an employee is ever having a natural conversation with them
8 Park a big posh car right outside the building
7 Have more meetings
6 Become involved in personal issues
5 Trust anyone
4 Be swayed from your core beliefs
3 Employ pals
2 Employ beautiful secretaries
1 Incentivise the workforce: reward – yes; dangle carrot – no. One day you will run out of carrots
WITH THE PURCHASE OF VIRGIN RADIO, unbeknown to me, the seeds of what was to become a lonely and almost fatal madness had also been sown. The aforementioned artistic freedom was there, for sure, but this came hand in hand with corporate responsibility, and these two components, yoked together, were never going to happily coexist. Something I would unfortunately have to discover the hard way.
I should have spotted the signs. I remember turning up for work at Golden Square in Soho one morning, no more than a month into my tenure. It was the middle of winter, when early mornings are painful to the touch. No sooner had I entered the building than I was confronted with what must have been fifty or sixty boxes piled on the ground floor, taking up so much room they almost made the corridor impassable. Upon inspection I discovered that inside each of these boxes was a brand new computer.
‘What do we need all these computers for?’ I remember asking myself. ‘What’s wrong with the ones we already have? Who is cleared to sign cheques for such large orders and shouldn’t I know about purchases of such bulk?’
Not the most colourful of thoughts with which to start one’s day.
For ownership – see headaches. Lord, why did I not realise? Lots of people (OK, men, mostly) like the idea of owning their local pub, or golf course, or restaurant, but it’s far better just to go there, have some fun, pay the bill and leave the mowing of the fairways and cleaning of the dirty pots to someone else.
Worse than managing things, though, is managing people.
I will never forget my first encounter with a group of my new employees, when I organised for all the DJs to meet up at the local pub for a bonding session. I thought they would be a like-minded bunch to start with; my fellow presenters in a world full of padded walls, soundproof glass and overblown egos. In contrast to other stations – where off air, the DJs barely ever see or speak to each other – I was determined that at my radio station things would be different. We would be one big happy family, like the Monkees on telly, or the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night. I thought a regular get together would give my guys a voice, a feeling of inclusiveness – nothing too cute or touchy-feely, merely a line of communication to each other and to me, their boss. I thought the best plan would be to organise a lunchtime meeting in a pub round the corner from the studio.
Wrong!
The morning meeting I had across town that day overran and, as a result, I found myself having to sprint the mile or so back to base to make it on time for our DJ summit. I eventually arrived at the pub a few minutes after one o’clock, puffed out and red in the face but nonetheless excited about the prospect of meeting my elite guard all together for the first time. I was looking forward to a few beers and getting down to the business of encouraging the guys to spring forth their opinions and visions for our future together.
Wrong! Again.
There they were, my all-star line-up, stood somewhat lacklustre to say the least, at the bar, barely saying a word to each other.
What on earth were they thinking? Did they have it in their minds that I was going to fire them on the spot?
Looking back, perhaps they did. Perhaps it was exactly that, their lack of cheery chat may well have been terror-induced, but they were not to know my motive was one of unification, not suppression.
Already I could sense that this wasn’t going to plan and they were getting the wrong end of the stick. I was definitely one of them but in danger now of being perceived as a potential enemy – as having crossed over to the dark side.
Sure DJs did fall by the wayside as a result of my proprietorship. The management of people is a huge and complicated task and one that takes a very special talent, a talent not to be underrated.
‘Show me the money,’ Tom Cruise famously said in Jerry Maguire. Tom, you were wrong.
‘Show me the manager,’ any day of the week.
TOP 10 CRAZY THINGS TO DO WITH YOUR MONEY (#ulink_1b7416d0-39f0-535b-94df-f63ba148817c)
10 Spend it on people you have never met before
9 Spend it on people you don’t like
8 Spend it on people you suspect don’t like you
7 Spend it on really expensive wine, when everyone is too far gone to appreciate it
6 Spend it on holidays you don’t want to go on
5 Lend it to idiots
4 Invest in businesses run by idiots
3 Play the stock market (the big boys have the rest of us by the balls)
2 Think for one second it can ever buy you happiness
1 Forget how hard you worked to earn it
ULTIMATELY, MY OWNERSHIP OF THE GINGER MEDIA GROUP (GMG) would last no longer than two years, thank God, after which my brief and bizarre run as a rookie media mogul would morph into my becoming a multi-millionaire part-time DJ, with too much time on his hands and a bank account burning a hole in his pocket. Sounds fabulous, doesn’t it?
So why, then, is such coveted good fortune all too often the downfall of the people who come to experience it?
Perhaps it’s something to do with the paradise syndrome – a recognised psychological condition in which people imagine things are too good to be true, and so end up sabotaging them until they return once again to the shitty bad old days.
Was this what happened to me? I suspect it was. But before I get to the part where it all went wrong, let me cut to the chase and tell you how all this money ended up coming my way in the first place.
It was my job as proprietor of GMG, along with my CEO, David Campbell – DC, as I’ve always known him – and my agent Michael, to grow our new business from day one, just as we had promised our investors we would do. We had claimed to be able to at least double the £87 million we had originally paid, within three to five years. If and when this was achieved, we had agreed to sell it again and all retire to the Bahamas – or as it turned out in my case, Guildford.
Our initial plan for the ‘growing’ part was based around building up our already established television and radio business, whilst at the same time diversifying into becoming a more broad-based media company. The internet had just been born, and digital television and radio-broadcast platforms were taking their first steps as toddlers. In short, we were witnessing the beginnings of a communications and technological revolution, and rarely, if ever, had there been a better time for expansion.
GMG’s growth was, however, about to be stunted.
There was a problem, you see, a very simple problem – we were too successful, too quickly, without really doing very much at all. The ratings and revenue from the radio station increased at such an unexpected rate after we had taken over that the business almost immediately doubled and then almost tripled in value. Suddenly there was very little for us to do, over and above turning up for work every day. There was no need to push ourselves, there was no need to look for new opportunities and, most importantly of all, there was no need for us to take any risks.
So what was the problem, you may ask?
Well, it was like this. I had a very ambitious management team consisting of several natural entrepreneurs whose very DNA dictated they had to take any money-making heat they could get their hands on and turn it into a full-blown volcano – whether it was needed or not. Unfortunately at this juncture, because of our premature success in reaching and exceeding all our financial targets, these same guys soon found themselves at direct loggerheads with the boys and girls in our boardroom.
The management wanted to stick to the original brief of expansion, whereas our investors only cared about extracting the added value. As this point had already been reached, the investors understandably didn’t want any further and unnecessary throws of the dice.
Here’s what happened next:
Everyone knew we were worth millions more than just a few months before, maybe even as much as a hundred million more, maybe even more than that. In short, we were very good for credit, almost fireproof. Not surprisingly the management team decided the time was ripe for taking on bigger challenges – like buying a national newspaper for example, specifically the Daily Star.
If you want to make money, never buy a gleaming champion for sale at the top of the market, go instead for a leaky old boat that no one wants or cares about anymore.
The Daily Star was that boat; it was losing money hand over fist, had problems with its printing and distribution, and had become a predictable one-trick pony of gossip, girls and sport done on the cheap. However it was still also enjoying half-decent circulation figures and, with a little love and affection both behind the scenes and on the page, my trusty CEO, DC, reckoned it could be polished up and be back in the black within a year. He had investigated alternative ways of printing and the sharing of distribution facilities to help cut costs, and he and I had even had a clandestine lunch with Piers Morgan who, in principle, had agreed to be our editor.
Our thinking was something along the lines of radio stations being very similar to newspapers in so many ways. Why couldn’t our millions of new listeners become millions of new readers, and vice versa?
As momentum around Project Star gathered pace, the frisson of our second big deal was well and truly in the air – especially when we discovered we could snap up this ailing daily for the knock-down price of just £25 million, a snip at the time for a UK national newspaper title.
Alas, though, it was not to be.
The board rejected our request for permission to buy the Daily Star hands down. We had the deal in the bag, but they were insistent we didn’t need it. Their exact phrase was ‘Why do we need to bet the ranch anymore?’
The board left us in no doubt that they were more than happy with things as they stood. My management team, on the other hand, could not have been less satisfied with the situation. In fact they were about to throw their toys, along with their immense talent, right out of our company pram.
As soon as they were informed of the board’s decision, all three of them – the chief executive officer, the financial officer and the managing director – walked straight out of the building.
I couldn’t believe it.
Here was I, a radio DJ, former newsagent, kiss-o-gram and forklift-truck driver, now alone at the head of a £200 million company with close to two hundred employees and hundreds of thousands of pounds flowing in and out of our accounts on a daily basis.
I needed my boys back and I needed them back bloody quickly. I summoned the board to an emergency meeting scheduled for the second I came off the air the next day.
‘The management feel they can no longer work with you and have left,’ I offered up as a starter.
‘They have what?’ said one of the board.
‘They’ve gone, they’re no longer here, I am on my own and I am just a DJ, I have no idea what really goes on here and we need to get them back.’
‘Oh dear,’ said another member of the board.
‘Precisely,’ I concurred.
‘Well, this is not good, not good at all,’ said a third.
‘I agree wholeheartedly,’ I whimpered. By now they could see I was distressed.
‘What exactly is their issue?’ said the guy who had spoken first.
‘Growing the company is what they do, they identified a perfectly valid opportunity and you have refused point blank to support them.’
The board were sympathetic to their case but immovable when it came to taking any risk. I have to say they had a perfectly sound argument and one with which I was finding it very difficult to disagree. However, I still had a problem.
‘That may be the case,’ I bleated, increasingly desperate, ‘but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, I am on my own on this side of the table and all our employees are about to arrive at work and wonder where the hell the three blokes who run this place have disappeared to.’
‘So what do you want us to do?’ said the first one.
I hadn’t actually thought about the answer to this question. I just presumed the board would know what to do. I opened my mouth and hoped something half-sensible might come out.
‘You need to reassure them that it’s because of their efforts that we find ourselves in the position of having to do nothing.’ So far so good. ‘And then you need to tell them how good they are and … er … give them some more money.’
I have no idea where this last bit came from.
‘You want us to give the management a bonus for walking out?’
I wasn’t sure if I did or not but I wasn’t about to stop now.
‘Yes, more money, they’re businessmen after all, that’s what they’re about. We need to get them back in the door and re-incentivise them at the same time. A cheque each is the only way.’
Now this, dear friends, is me being extremely bad at business but extremely good at selling. Let’s face it, this was a terrible idea. People often say what a great businessman I am but there is nothing further from the truth. I am many things, but I am not, never have been and never will be a great businessman.
Although the management had an almost justifiable beef, there’s no way they should have deserted me in the first place, let alone been rewarded for doing so.
Indeed, when I foolishly tried a similar stunt a couple of years down the line, the whole episode ended up costing me £13 million and I didn’t work for the next three years.
But I must have been very convincing on the day because the board actually agreed to my suggestion, authorising me to dish out some new share options in the direction of my management team – if they deigned to return to work, that is.
I skipped off to the restaurant where they were waiting, happy to be the bearer of good news and confident they would see sense.
When I turned up they looked like three naughty schoolboys hoping to high heaven they weren’t going to get caned. If I’m totally honest, they looked like they thought they might be about to get fired. I suspect that they’d had time to reflect on their impetuousness and were perhaps beginning to think better of it. No need, though, for I only brought glad tidings of great joy.
‘You are all bonused up and back in business’, I declared to three visibly relieved and frankly somewhat surprised faces.
I only wish someone had been able to say the same to me later when, as I’ve said, I tried a similar stunt, but there I go, jumping the gun again.
Now, houses next and how to buy a really big one that you definitely can’t afford.
TOP 10 MUST HAVES WHEN I BUILT MY DREAM HOUSE (#ulink_262e9403-9da3-579c-89ea-a273aa6097b0)
10 Helipad
9 Trout lake
8 Hot tub (wooden – outdoor)
7 Village shop in the kitchen
6 Library
5 Waterfall in the library
4 Identical replica of my local pub
3 Steam room
2 Cinema
1 Space
WITH THE ROCK-STAR LIFESTYLE COMES THE ROCK-STAR MANSION and all that goes with it. It’s all so unoriginal, I know, but nobody teaches you how to be rich and I fell for every cliché in the book.
I’d been looking for a place ‘out of town’, as they say, for a year or two and as the millennium was looming I still hadn’t seen anything that remotely took my fancy. Not for want of trying, I might add, as I spent most weekends viewing properties from the east coast of Kent all the way down to the sand dunes of Dorset.
If there was a big house with land for sale, I wanted to see it. I looked at castles, farms, lighthouses, windmills – I even looked at one place that had its own airstrip where the chap who owned it said I could have his Fokker thrown in for free!
So far, though, for one reason or another, nowhere had quite clicked. In fact it was getting to the point where I had just about exhausted all combinations of commutable counties and different types of dwellings therein. I needed something to happen to help me change my mindset, and it did, on a skiing holiday to Whistler in Canada, of all places.
This holiday was a freebie and, like most freebies, was probably more trouble than it was worth. After all who would travel several thousand miles to another continent for a skiing holiday that lasted just four days? Me and my old pal Johnny Boy Revell, that’s who. We were both from council estates and still hadn’t quite got over the fact that people were willing to give us stuff for free.
We almost felt like we had to go, despite the immense jetlag and the fact that by now we were both well off enough to pay for ourselves to go first class practically anywhere in the world. But a bargain was a bargain and so off we trotted deep into the snowy peaks of the Canadian Rockies.
Barely able to keep our eyes open when we arrived, we just about managed to hire a Chevrolet Silverado 4x4 pickup truck, throw our gear in the back and get on our way. We were soon to discover there are some things that can blow the cobwebs of jetlag clean out of the water.
Almost the second we hit the mountain road we became overwhelmed by what lay before us. In less than half an hour we were in a wilderness of calm and serenity, a world away from the hubbub of the tempestuous media rat race. There really was nothing but a blanket of white for as far as our tired eyes could see. Truly spellbinding.
As we continued on our way, we passed countless expanses of icy blue water, one of which was so breath-takingly beautiful we just had to stop, get out and stare at it for a few minutes.
As the wonder of the Rockies continued to astound, a newfound sense of peace slowly began washing over the pair of us but, where I was concerned, I could also feel a slight trace of anger beginning to gnaw at its heels.
‘Where is this anger coming from?’ I thought. ‘This isn’t right, I was about to be really content. Please leave me alone.’
But it wasn’t going anywhere. It wanted a word.
‘Why on earth haven’t you sorted out a house in the country back in the UK yet?’ it snorted. ‘You spend every weekend cooped up in your flat in London crawling from one ugly watering hole to the next when you could be out and about feeling the way you do now. You have the money, go get a life!’
I had to concede this anger had a point. I made a private deal with it to do two things when I returned back home.
1. I would buy a Chevrolet Silverado 4x4.
2. I would buy a house in the country within a month.
True to my word, I ordered the Chevy immediately upon my return, to be delivered on Christmas Day 1998. As for the house, I concluded that because I had looked at well over a hundred in the last year, at least one of which must have been suitable, it could only be reluctance on my part to commit to a big move out of the city that was the problem, rather than not having found a suitable property.
So here’s what I decided to do:
I would simply instruct an estate agent to take me to look at the five best houses currently for sale in the south-east of England, regardless of cost. After seeing all five, I would then undertake to buy the one that I liked the most, even if I didn’t really like it that much at all. This way I was forcing myself into a ‘yes’ situation.
I know this philosophy is a little extreme, especially for a boy who started life on a council estate with little more than his pocket money, his push bike and a paper round, but this is where I now found myself and I was determined to make the most of it.
There was more drastic action to come.
Because these houses were likely to be tens of miles apart, maybe even hundreds, it was going to be quite difficult to compare and contrast them. I therefore informed the agent to arrange all five viewings consecutively on one single day and to meet me that morning at Battersea heliport. I also kindly requested he seek permission from the vendors concerned for us to land in their gardens. We were about to have the viewing trip of a lifetime.
When we climbed up above Richmond Park on the Wednesday morning in question the rest of the world was at work. I don’t know who had to try the hardest to play it cool, the agent or myself. We were both grinning from ear to ear.
Extravagant as this strategy may seem, there was more than a grain of sanity in what we were doing. After all, we were dealing with houses worth several million pounds each, and if it took a one-day lease of a Twin Squirrel to secure the right one, then it would be money well spent. The fact that it was a tonne of fun in the process was merely a bonus, albeit a pretty big one. Plus it meant I could also get to spy into the gardens of any potential new neighbours whilst we were at it.
The first property we looked at was in Windsor, right on the River Thames. It was huge, Georgian, white and stunning. After a quick scoot round, enough to gain a mental picture, we were back on board and up and away again. Next stop Chichester, to look at a renovated castle. This was also very nice. Protected by its own moat, with fabulous lawns, the present owners had spent a small fortune renovating their home by blending ultra-modern with genuinely ancient. As a result there was lots of new glass, mixed in with old stone – a real wow house, but just a bit too far away from London to make it practical.
Two landings completed, two houses down and Windsor was still winning. Time then for number three. The pilot tracked back over the South Downs, overflying Goodwood and Midhurst, before landing on the lawn of a fabulous house just off the A3, complete with its own lake, working water-mill and state-of-the-art recording studio.
‘Who lives in a house like this?’ I could hear the voice in my head say.
‘Roger Taylor from Queen’s place,’ whispered the agent, as if he’d heard me.
The story goes that when Queen had their first hit album, Roger went straight out and bought this house. It didn’t occur to him that they might not have another one; Roger told me this story himself. He also told me about the first time Freddie Mercury came over to visit. He said that Freddie couldn’t believe how audacious the band’s drummer had been with his recent purchase, so much so that he immediately felt compelled to return to London to buy a brand-new white Rolls-Royce from Jack Barclays. Having achieved this in no more than a couple of hours, Freddie was back at Roger’s in his new wheels in time for tea.
Roger couldn’t have been more welcoming that day and his house was to die for; so fabulous, in fact, that he ended up withdrawing it from the market and staying there himself, though not before adding a new library wing – all 7,000 square feet of it.
Time then for house number four.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Hascombe Court, a turn-of-the-century manor house set in forty-seven acres of Gertrude Jekyll gardens, situated a few miles south of Guildford. This house was heaven on earth, sitting atop a hill overlooking the quaint little village from which it took its name.
No more than fifteen minutes after we landed there I made a call to my long-suffering accountant.
‘Kirit, I would like to buy a house.’
‘OK, that’s fine, where is it and how much?’
‘It’s near Guildford and it’s £4 million, which is a bargain because it was £5.5 million.’ This was true; it had been on the market for over a year. I couldn’t believe no one had snapped it up.
‘Chris, you don’t have £4 million.’ ‘I know that, but can we get it?’
Poor Kirit – who actually isn’t poor at all but you know what I mean – he’s had to cope with several telephone calls like this over the years, the most recent being when I bought a car I couldn’t afford at an auction in Italy in 2007. That phone call followed exactly the same lines and both times I’m happy to say he came up with the funds required to indulge my desires.
I never ask how he does it – I think it’s probably best I don’t know – but following such episodes I try not to call him again about anything for as long as I possibly can.
On this occasion I would have to call Kirit back sooner rather than later as it transpired that Hascombe Court and its forty-seven acres turned out to be only the half of it – literally.
After the phone call I discovered that over the road was the second half of the estate which was made up of a farm, three cottages and another hundred and twenty-seven acres which was also up for sale.
‘Kirit, I need a further £1.5 million, there’s more of the estate to be bought.’
‘I see,’ he sighed.
I was so sure about Hascombe Court that I didn’t even bother going to look at house number five, asking the pilot to return us safely and swiftly to London.
Within four weeks I had completed the purchase of both lots for a total purchase price just shy of £6 million. I suddenly had an idea how Roger may have felt all those years before, wondering where his band’s next hit might come from, but you know what? I really didn’t care. Besides, I could always sell it again if I had to, which was a bloody good job because that’s precisely what was destined to happen.
They say one of the best ways to go about making a small fortune is to start with a big one and lose most of it. That is exactly what the stars had lined up for me but I was yet to do the losing bit. So, let’s find out how that happened first, shall we?
TOP 10 RESTAURANTS I’LL NEVER FORGET (#ulink_6d93f14d-f69e-5738-a924-99d896ff794f)
10 The Italian when I was 20 where a date asked for Parmesan cheese to go with her pasta. I thought it was a greedy request for an additional course
9 My first Chinese. I got cramp from trying to eat with chopsticks
8 My first Indian, where a ‘mate’ told me to go for the phal. The phal was still going for me the next morning
7 The French restaurant where I had my first meal with Michael Grade (former head of Channel 4). I ordered steak tartare and had no idea it was just raw meat
6 Lunch in the Palm Grill in Los Angeles with Bernie Brillstein and Brad Gray when I was 29, just after they offered me $11 million to work on TV in the States
5 Lunch in Langan’s with Ronnie and Peter O’Toole
4 Dinner with Billie in the Four Seasons the night before we were married in Las Vegas
3 The wedding lunch at Alambique in the Algarve, which is run by my best man Paulo, and where my wife Natasha and I started our new life together
2 Lunch in Little Italy with Jade and her mum after finally getting my shit together to do something about my relationship with my daughter
1 Lunch, again at Langan’s, with my management team-read on
FOR A BRIEF WHILE THE MANAGEMENT TEAM were back in the building and back on side, but I could tell there was an ongoing and underlying frustration sapping their spirits. They were now under strict instructions that our fledgling golden brand was only to be polished, no longer pawned, in the quest for additional treasures.
It was at this point I realised I could do little more than I already had done to appease them, and that in reality I owned the company in name alone. I may have been signing the cheques but I was definitely not calling the shots.
Unrest soon began to set in for all of us and unrest, by its very nature, tends to grow as opposed to diminish. My guys were once again becoming more and more like caged tigers with the passing of each day. They were desperate to be cut loose and make the company more money, but instead they had to close their minds, eyes and ears to the countless business opportunities that were piling up in their in-trays.
I decided we needed a chat to clear the air.
‘Lunch?’ I suggested to DC.
‘Oh yes,’ came the resounding reply.
‘Langan’s?’ I suggested.
‘We’ll meet you there’, he confirmed.
Langan’s Brasserie is by far the best place for lunch I have ever been to in my life and I have been fortunate enough to have been to quite a few. Located just off Piccadilly, opposite Green Park, Langan’s doesn’t do quiet in any way shape or form. If you want quiet, Langan’s is not the place for you. For everything else, however, it’s brilliant.
Its energy, atmosphere, opulence and patronage are unique. And it’s always busy, even on the first Monday in January, notoriously the quietest day in every restaurant in the land. From lunch at midday right through to last orders at midnight, Langan’s never stops buzzing.
I’ve yet to be invited down to the kitchen but can only presume it’s a sight to behold, as the head chef and his loyal team churn out dish after dish of some of the most comforting food known to mankind: good old English fare, fearlessly fatty and dripping with calories.
There’s the sausage and mash made with far too much butter, the beautiful cod in batter so brittle it explodes in your mouth, the liver and bacon so bountiful it obscures the evidence of any plate beneath, and the croustade d’oeufs de caille – a sort of quails’ egg pasty – which is so good that quite frankly it should be illegal.
The waiters who run the whole show are dressed like boxing referees in black trousers, crisp white shirts with black dickybows and black silk waistcoats. They pride themselves on efficient service yet still appear to have plenty of time to chat to the customers whilst simultaneously being rushed off their feet. I’ve never quite figured out how it is they achieve such an illusion; maybe they’re all secretly magicians.
The artwork is also a sight to behold, providing the most colourful of backdrops to this already vibrant theatre of food and fantasy and, like most things in Langan’s, it also has a story to tell. Struggling artists yet to be discovered would offer up a completed canvas in return for a few months’ free feeding. These very paintings still adorn the walls there and include works by such well-known names as David Hockney and Guy Gladwell. For what such paintings are worth today, a fellow could easily eat out anywhere in the world without having to worry about the bill for the rest of his life.
The real legend of Langan’s however, is the original owner, Peter Langan himself. Sadly no longer with us, I’m sorry to say I never had the pleasure of meeting him, which is a real shame because from what I’ve heard he was quite a character, to say the least.
Langan stories are infamous in the catering trade. There are myriad tales of the Irish chef-cum-restaurateur who somehow persuaded Michael Caine to become his partner. No bad thing as it turned out, as Langan repaid Michael’s belief in him with impressive profits year after year. In fact Caine is the only celeb I know who has ever made any money out of owning a restaurant – and I feel qualified to say that, having owned three myself!
Langan’s eccentricities were born not only out of his love for his restaurant, the running of which entailed ludicrously long hours, but also from the countless bottles of bubbly he managed to consume on a daily basis. He was a big, big drinker: champagne and cider being his two favourite poisons of choice.
In the end it was the dreaded bottle that got the better of him, but not before he had formulated some interesting theories on life, love and justice.
On one occasion, for example, he was witnessed crawling under the tables during a lunchtime service, on his way to bite the ankle of a lady who’d thought it completely acceptable to bring in her beloved toy poodle. Having arrived at the ankle in question, Langan duly chomped into it with all his might. Neither the dog nor the lady was ever seen there again.
My other favourite Langan tale features him dressing up as a tramp and standing on the street outside the front door of his establishment, begging for money. This was a game he loved to play where, if any benevolent soul did happen to afford him a shilling or two, he would dramatically reveal his true identity before asking them inside to join him as his guest for the rest of the day and – no doubt – most of the night.
I’d love to have met Langan but despite his legendary status, ultimately there is nothing remotely funny about someone who drinks too much; it’s always the drink and not the drinker who has the last laugh. And so it was with Peter. In a desperate attempt to win back his battle-weary wife he set fire to himself as a cry for help, but he ended up overdoing it and it took him six weeks to die of his injuries.
After Peter so tragically died, Michael, having been bitten by the restaurant bug, remained an active partner in the business and could often be witnessed dining with his friends and colleagues at table number one.
Table number one can be found in the left-hand corner just as you walk in. It’s renowned as the best table in the house because from it you can see the rest of the dining room without having to look round – basically you can have a good old nosey without anyone noticing. Most top tables share this trait, though I doubt many of them have as much to be nosey about as Langan’s does.
There is no other place in the world that shares its unique blend of dining enthusiasts, where MPs mix with football managers, ladies who do lunch mingle with gentlemen who would love to do them, and Essex girls flock to trade city boys. This heady cocktail of clientele and culture-clashes often leads to a marathon of musical chairs, with tables of four or five frequently merging to become larger gatherings that often have to be politely asked to vacate their tables as the next diners are waiting to be seated – for dinner.
I’ve been fortunate enough to sit at table one from time to time and it’s always been a joy, as the waiters acknowledge one’s ascent to the top spot with a respectful nod. Table one is presided over by Peter Langan himself, thanks to a fabulous Guy Gladwell painting that hangs on the wall next to it. The great host has been immortalised in one of his trademark pale grey linen suits, which is all he ever wore; he had six, all identical and usually spattered and stained with the remains of whatever it was he had been eating and drinking that day.
The genius of this painting lies in the fact that the subject has his back to us and yet it’s so obviously him. He has his right hand in his pocket as he appears to walk away, but I have been assured, by people in the know, that he isn’t actually walking anywhere, he is leaning against a door with one heel in the air as he struggles to balance whilst he takes a pee through the letterbox.
So lunch it was for me and the guys, not at table one as it happened, but not far off. We could see enough of what we wanted to and we were all set to get down to business as well as eat, drink and be merry in the process.
That day’s lunch party was made up of the aforementioned David Campbell, a lovely man and good friend, Andy Mollet, the financial director, a solid and trusty numbers man, and the managing director, whose name escapes me for some reason, primarily because I want it to.
After loosening up with the usual round of excellent Bloody Marys followed by a cold beer each, it was time to embark upon the blissful task of perusing the mouthwatering Langan’s menu.
Whenever I do lunch where there is business also to be done, I find it difficult to eat anything substantial. With passion being required for both, I can seldom split myself between the two, and as business was in the pound seats on this occasion, I plumped for the double Caesar salad option. This is something I used to do a lot; Caesar salad as a starter and as a main course – Hail Caesars all round and no hardship, as the Caesars at Langan’s are to die for.
With our food orders now in, our powwow was ready to get under way although it stalled momentarily as we did that classic thing of ‘everyone chatting about any subject other than the one they’re there to talk about’- the human version of starlings swarming at twilight until one of them takes the plunge.
Finally we were off and started by mulling over our thwarted bid for the Daily Star, before moving on to where we felt we were at the moment, both as a company and as individuals, taking into consideration the constraints under which we currently found ourselves.
The question in a nutshell was, ‘What could we possibly do next?’
It was patently obvious that we were in a Catch-22 situation; we’d become too successful, too quickly, and now had our hands tied. We were millions of pounds ahead of our projections in turnover and profit – three years ahead to be precise – and the board had no inclination whatsoever to risk a penny of it.
But there had to be something we could do. Even in a dark room with no windows you can still ‘think’ light.
‘Alright,’ I said, suddenly realising there was only one creative option open to us. ‘If we’re done, we’re done. Our next big idea, gentlemen’ – I paused briefly at this point partly for dramatic effect and also to make sure I had my colleagues’ full and undivided attention – ‘will be to sell the company three years ahead of schedule. This,’ I declared, ‘is definitely something we can do.’
These words were as much of a shock to me as they were to my three dining companions, but I knew it was a good idea because I suddenly acquired that sick feeling in my gut, the one you get when something is either very right or very wrong. Fortunately for all concerned this felt like the very right type to me.
There were of course issues with such a tumultuous decision; when are there not? For example, did we really want to give up this goldmine of a company before we had to? Would the company grow in value anyway without us doing anything drastic and could we reap more dividends? Why not just relax and take it easy for another year or two?
After discussing my eureka moment for a short while, the boys came up with a prophetic and convincing outline of where the business was now, considering advertising revenues, the listening figures and other important factors, including, most importantly, where the business was likely to be at our planned exit point thirty-six months hence.
As far as they could see, it was difficult to envisage the numbers getting any better than they were at present. In fact, they went on to add, it was conceivable the numbers had already reached a plateau and if anything might even begin to get worse.
As we continued to weigh up the scenario, it became increasingly hard for any of us to argue against the idea of an early sale. We therefore concluded that this was a suggestion we felt justified in putting to the board at the earliest available opportunity.
Having unanimously agreed on this course of action, a palpable air of optimism – something that had been conspicuous by its absence of late – suddenly returned.
Eighteen months after borrowing £85 million to snatch Virgin Radio from under the noses of the Capital Radio group, we were going to put the station back on the market at a guide price of between £175 million to £300 million.
Not a bad bit of business – if we could pull it off. Either way, one thing was for sure. The boys had the fire in their bellies once again.
It’s amazing what a good restaurant can serve up.
TOP 10 UNFORGETTABLE SHOWBIZ MOMENTS (#ulink_27ffeee5-e91b-5308-ab40-669f5ce272f4)
10 First show on the radio (Manchester Piccadilly Radio circa 1988)
9 First Big Breakfast
8 Last Big Breakfast
7 First Radio 1 Breakfast Show
6 Playing golf in front of 30,000 people with Catherine Zeta-Jones against Bobby Ewing and Cheech from Cheech and Chong, when Catherine was playing so badly she started to cry – and that was only on the second hole!
5 Leaving TFI Fridayon a speedboat up the Thames with Paul McCartney
4 Watching Elton John present the last ever TFI Friday inmy place as I had gone AWOL
3 Locking up the Giants Stadium for U2 in New York after they’d gone home. Of 60,000 people, I was the last to leave
2 First Radio 2 Breakfast Show
1 The mad wine night at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s house in the South of France
THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE OF THIS PERIOD and for the last three years, I had been dating a saint of a woman by the name of Suzi Aplin.
Of all the amazing females I have had the ridiculous good fortune to be with in my life, there is no one who deserves a medal for services to this delusional, fruitcake of a man more than Suzi does. Suzi Aplin – television producer, live wire, force of nature and all-round, solid-gold human being.
Suzi and I got it together after a night of drunken passion, there’s no use trying to sugar-coat it and pretend otherwise. There was no romance, there was no plan, we simply started the evening in a comedy club in Greenwich and ended up back at her place later that night. The next morning we found ourselves food shopping in Suzi’s local Waitrose like a couple who had been together for years.
Suzi was, and still very much is, tall, blonde and vivacious with marvellously long legs, even for a girl of five foot ten. She is also slim, maybe a little too slim, but willowy enough to get away with it, and even though she has a classically pretty face, she has not the first idea how beautiful she really is.
As well as all these wonderful physical attributes, the package gets better the deeper you dig. She is blessed with almost inexhaustible energy and is as positive as I believe it is possible to be about everyone and everything. She can be frank when she needs to be, honest and diplomatic when it’s called for, and ditzy and dithering when she gets in a bit of a tiz – but of course this only adds to her charm. She also has the ability to listen and laugh in all the right places and lend a friend a kind shoulder when they need someone to lean on. Oh, and she’s ever such a little bit posh – which I love…
She is, I suppose, perfect – and if you’re thinking to yourself why did I ever let her go, please let’s not go there, at least not yet.
I first encountered this wonder-woman when I was working on The Big Breakfast. Suzi was the guest booker – one of the toughest jobs in the business, always fighting against other shows for first dibs on the latest people in town, then having to deal with all the egos and politics that follow such characters around.
Suzi was renowned as one of the best at her job, a fact confirmed by the constant headhunting she faced to go and work on other shows. She had formed excellent social and working relationships with all the necessary music, film and PR companies and, as a result, was able to deliver A-list guests where others only failed.
When I needed a guest booker for my new show Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush I didn’t have to look very far. Suzi was top of my list and as my new production company shared an office with Planet 24, the producers of The Big Breakfast, she was also only a few desks away.
Charlie and Waheed, my former bosses, were reluctant to let her go, but as my new show’s need was greater than theirs plus they had a vested interest as they were my partners, they kindly if reluctantly allowed me to nab her.
Suzi had always been easy on the eye and had enjoyed the attentions of many a male admirer but I have to say thus far I had not included myself in that group and, although we were great mates, never in a million years did I think we would end up as an item.
Perhaps a deeper connection between us began to grow as a result of us working more closely together, and then subconsciously came to a head the night we hooked up.
‘In wine the truth’, as the saying goes, a phrase Suzi used a lot and there was certainly plenty of wine involved on that Friday night back in Greenwich. Having said that, it could easily have ended up as a quick fling until, that is, I opened the Sun newspaper a couple of days later.
Suzi had been in a cafe, on the Sunday after our serendipitous sneaky session back at hers and had been discussing the post-mattress aftermath of what had happened between her and her boss with a close friend. I think one could refer to what was taking place as a bona fide girly chat.
This would have been all well and good had not one Piers Morgan been sitting directly behind them. Piers, another recurring name in my story, who was still working as a gossip columnist at the time, was no more than three feet away, enabling him to hear every single word they were saying. He later told me he couldn’t believe his luck.
What Piers did next is … exactly what Piers was paid to do. He printed the highlights of Suzi and her pal’s conversation almost word for word for the nation to read over their cornflakes in a two-page spread.
When I read his article I was almost speechless, not because I was angry or shocked – far from it – the press were part of my everyday existence, but because of all the lovely, complimentary things Suzi had allegedly been saying about me.
I called her straight away.
‘Oh my God, I’m s-s-s-so sorry, and I’m so embarrassed,’ she stuttered before I could squeeze in a hello.
‘Please d-d-d-don’t think I’m like that, I’m not one of those girls that does this. I don’t know where they got the story from. It’s almost as if he was there. I have to say, I did s-s-s-say those things but only to my friend. I don’t know how they found out – I know for a fact Sam wouldn’t have told them. I trust her with my life. I completely understand if you want me to leave and go and find another job somewhere else.’
She may well have talked for a full five minutes before coming up for air and letting me get a word in.
As she paused for breath I seized my moment and explained to Suzi that Piers had revealed in the piece that it was he himself who was behind her in the cafe, and that far from being annoyed or embarrassed about what he’d written, I was chuffed to bits by what she’d had to say about me.
Once Suzi had calmed down there was only one way to look at it, as far as I was concerned. Piers had done us both a huge favour as I now knew how she felt about me – along with the rest of the country for that matter – and his revealing column inches had vicariously awakened me to how I felt about her. The more I thought about her, the more I realised what a catch she was and what an amazing girlfriend she’d make. I concluded that I needed to do something about this, and fast; I would ask Suzi to move in with me.
This may seem a little drastic, but as you may have deduced by now, I’m an all-or-nothing guy. Admittedly this is not a trait that always led to the smoothest of rides, but that’s just the way I am, I can’t help it. Besides, neither Suzi nor I had time for a relaxed and measured courtship; we were both workaholics and unless we went home to the same bed every night, there was a good chance we might not see each other for weeks.
After a lot of fun and a couple of false starts in my flat in north London, my former guest booker and I made the transition to an official grown-up couple, moving into a rather grand town house in Notting Hill in the process. Suzi and I were now an item and the various boys and girls we had both been dating of late were duly told to back off for the foreseeable future.
The more I came to know my new girlfriend the more I liked her.
Suzi loved food – although you would never know from the size of her. She also loved to smoke, not prolifically but poetically, drawing the maximum available pleasure from every individual drag. Most of all, though, she loved her red wine.
Her penchant for red wine came not so much from its alcoholic content and its effect but rather from its smell, colour and – of course – its taste. She sipped wine from her glass like no one I’ve ever seen before or since, her eyes closed, waiting for what was to come, her lips curling upwards at either end almost in a wry smile at the thought of the ecstasy of a full-on sensory assault.
Her passion for wine, food and fags often took us to France, where they seem to do these three things quite a lot and without worrying about them too much.
Holidays – nice ones – and especially in France, were new to me. Up until this point holidays had been an unwelcome cross I had to bear. I did go away from time to time but I had never really enjoyed myself and I could never wait to get back. I loved working and I hated airports, plus I burn at even the slightest mention of the word ‘sun’, so what was there to like?
Suzi was clever, though. She was having none of that. If I wanted to be with her, not only was I going to have to go on holiday, I was going to have to enjoy it.
She would not be patronised by the presence of a token companion, she wanted to see and feel me having as good a time as she was or there was no deal. How she managed to successfully extract this out of me where everyone else had failed I have no idea, but extract it she did and we always ended up having a blast.
All of our vacation destinations were pretty top notch, to be honest, but it was the Côte d’Azur that we loved to go to most of all. There is no place on earth like the South of France with its picture-perfect coastline all the way from Monaco to the Cap d’Antibes; glorious mountains crashing into the blindingly beautiful Mediterranean Sea below.
Whether you are having lunch at a waterside restaurant in the pretty village of Beaulieu-sur-Mer or looking down over a thousand feet from one of the exclusive restaurants perched on the side of Eze mountain, there is nothing not to like – except perhaps the bill. As well as topping the league in the beauty stakes, the Côte d’Azur is also the most expensive place I have ever been to.
That said, budget and availability permitting, Suzi and I would always try to stay at La Voile d’Or (the Golden Sail), a small but perfectly formed bijou hotel situated right on the rocks just above the sea in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, probably my favourite place on the planet.
Like several of the hotels in the region, La Voile d’Or didn’t take credit cards until very recently. When Suzi and I were going there it was always cash only.
I think such hotels have been forced to change policy as with a single fried egg now costing as much as £10, the size of the bags full of money required to settle residents’ accounts were becoming noticeably impractical.
I understand this was particularly evident at the most famous hotel in the region, where a basket of bread at your breakfast table will set you back £36 and that’s before you even think about daring to order any tea, coffee or croque-monsieur. I have stayed at this place three times, most recently in 2009, and the sight of l’addition arriving never fails to bring me out in a cold sweat.
Not to worry though, eh? What’s money for, if not to spend on the things you like with someone you love? What Suzi and I could afford we would enjoy, and what we could not we wouldn’t worry about.
We always talked about what it must be like to have a house in Saint-Jean, the dream to end all dreams, but there is a knack to owning houses abroad. The secret is that unless you have infinite wealth, it’s imperative that you are a founder-member of a future trend as opposed to someone who ends up paying through the nose, having turned up late to the party.
Take Noël Coward and Ian Fleming, for example, and their respective retreats in Jamaica when it was the last place on earth a European might think to live. They picked up their slices of paradise for virtually nothing. The same can be said of John Lennon and his various forays into Malta, and let’s not forget Richard Branson and the legendary bargain that was Necker Island. The story goes that he paid ten per cent of the asking price – just £300,000. Not bad for your own island; he now charges double that if you want to rent it for just one week.
And so it was with Saint-Jean, we just didn’t realise it at the time.
David Niven had lived there once upon a time and his house was for sale during one of our early trips. Set just off the main drag towards the shore on the path to Eze, it was a magnificent movie-star mansion, almost Gatsbyesque in its grandeur, and with its own private jetty and walled tropical garden thrown in.
I recall the price tag being £4.7 million.
‘What?’ I remember thinking back then. I couldn’t believe anywhere in the world could be worth that much. I was of course entirely wrong about David Niven’s house, which has since changed hands for ten times that amount. A good house is only expensive once, they say. After that you will never be able to afford it.
Suzi and I were destined to miss the French property boat big time, but this was not the case for Bono and his musical colleague the Edge. They had bagged themselves a relative bargain on the beach nearby just a few years before.
No sooner had the Dublin rockers made their first few quid banging out their irresistible brand of rock and roll than they heard of a beach-front villa up for grabs for a couple of hundred thousand pounds. A fortune to them then, but they knew something Suzi and I didn’t and, without pausing for breath, they snapped it right up. They bought it between the two of them and proceeded to share the house straight down the middle whenever they could get away. Each of their families had half the villa, with both families coming together in a communal living room and kitchen.
It’s testament to the two men’s friendship that this arrangement worked for over ten years before they succeeded in getting planning permission for a second property on their not unsubstantial plot. They now enjoy a villa each, as well as a combined net value of tens of millions of pounds.
I know the above is fact because I’ve been there. Bono, who had appeared on TFI Friday several times, heard Suzi and I were in his ‘Manoir dans Le Midi’ and tracked us down to our hotel, where he extended, via a rather creative fax, a generous invite for us to come over and enjoy a slab of pizza and a glass or two of wine with him and his clan. The fax requested an RSVP and informed us that he would pop by and pick us up if we were interested.
Interested? What do you think?
When the night in question arrived, Suzi and I sat outside on the terrace eagerly awaiting our ‘lift’ whilst desperately trying to act cool and not drink too much, by playing Scrabble of all things. However, by the time our man arrived, we were both a bottle of champagne to the good and as giddy as kites. So much for our strategy.
All the other guests in the bar, meanwhile, did a doubletake the moment Bono walked in. You see, in real life he sort of does and yet at the same time doesn’t quite look like Bono. It can sometimes be difficult to be sure.
I would be lying if I denied the swelling sense of pride I felt as he spotted Suzi and me beaming back at him across the lawn. He strode over purposefully, shades on, arms wide open, the perfect rock-star welcome.
As we hastily and somewhat nervously gathered up our things, the normally surly French waiters began throwing smiles in our direction. Smiles we thus far had been unaware they were capable of producing. Strange, that.
The drive back to Bono’s house was right up there in my top ten celebrity journeys. There in front of the main door was parked his gleaming black BMW convertible, roof down, all set and good to go. A turn of the key, a growl of the exhaust and the screech of rubber and we were off into the balmy Mediterranean air with the lead singer of one of the greatest rock bands in the world as our chauffeur.
Did it get any better than this? Well yes, actually it did.
As we exited the village of Saint-Jean, Bono turned up the car stereo and started singing along at the top of his voice to The Carpenters’ Greatest Hits. This was another one of those moments – of which there have been many because I have been very lucky. The surreal ones are the best and they don’t get much more surreal than our night with Bono.
Once we arrived at the bargain villa on the beach, the food and wine began to flow along with the stories. Lots and lots of stories. Bono loves to tell a tale or two, most of them wonderfully outrageous. Like the time he and his mate Gav ran out of brandy one night so decided to take a small dinghy out to sea in search of the US Navy and more booze.
Beaulieu, next door to Eze and Saint-Jean, is a deep-sea port and as such can accommodate the biggest ships in the world including, on this occasion, a humongous US aircraft carrier.
‘They love U2, the Americans,’ Bono said to Gav as they made for open water, ‘they’re bound to have some brandy on board, sure they’ll be up for giving us a bottle.’
Now, two things here. Firstly, it was the middle of the night and the sea can be a dangerous place at the best of times, and secondly, how on earth were the US Navy supposed to know this was Bono and his mate Gav requesting benevolence and not some murderous terrorists surreptitiously attempting to stick a limpet mine to the side of their warship?
The story goes that once safely located next to the carrier in their minute dinghy, our two thirsty adventurers looked up to register a vessel the size of a small city bearing down upon them.
‘What did you do next?’ asked Suzi, barely able to speak for laughing.
‘I took out an oar from the boat,’ replied Bono, ‘and I started to hit the metal hull as hard as I could – clang, clang, clang.’
‘No way!’ we both exclaimed like a pair of school kids. We were gripped.
‘Way,’ came the reply. ‘And then.’ he continued, ‘after about a minute, Gav now having joined in, we hear the whirring of chains being lowered and see what looked like some kind of mini destroyer descending down towards the water a few hundred feet away.’
‘Shit,’ shouts Gav, ‘that boat’s got a gun attached to it. Start the motor, Bono, they think we’re attacking them. Fuck, they’re going to blow us up!’
Suzi and I at this point were on the floor killing ourselves laughing and Bono, not immune to a fit of the giggles himself, was finding it increasingly difficult to carry on spinning his merry yarn.
When he finally did manage to finish, we all had tears streaming down our cheeks. It transpired that the night watch on board the US naval craft had indeed identified a security breach in the form of Bono and Gav in their dinghy, and launched a gunboat patrol to check what on earth was going on.
Suffice to say they caught up with our two barking-mad buccaneers within seconds, both of whom were on the brink of having a heart attack. Bono said it was still the most frightened he’s ever been and Gav likewise. But did they ever get their brandy?
Well, he said no but I suspect otherwise.
But Bono wasn’t the only well-known surprise Cap Ferrat had in store for us that week. When you go to extraordinary places, extraordinary things tend to happen and we weren’t done yet.
TOP 10 THINGS THAT COME IN A BOTTLE (#ulink_6835e789-556f-59a8-b344-0e279b000d66)
10 HP Sauce
9 Worcestershire sauce
8 Dandelion and burdock
7 Extra virgin olive oil
6 Vinegar
5 An ice cold beer
4 A pint of fresh, full fat milk
3 Heinz tomato ketchup
2 White wine
1 Red wine
THE FOLLOWING THURSDAY AFTERNOON, the sun was high in the sky, the sensible people were having a siesta whilst the sun worshippers were beachside busy baking themselves. As Suzi was happy to sizzle with the best of them and I was neither tired nor mad enough to expose my milk-white body and already sunburnt face to yet more heat, I decided to mosey on down to the town to enjoy a quiet read and a cold drink in the local patisserie.
After doing exactly that and whilst ambling back up the gentle hill towards the hotel, I noticed in the distance an equally pink-faced gentleman walking towards me. I smiled to myself, more out of a sense of camaraderie than anything else, but as he drew closer I couldn’t help feeling he looked familiar.
‘Blow me,’ I thought to myself as we continued to converge, ‘he looks for all the world like David Frost.’
Several more steps towards each other and…
‘Blow me again, it is David Frost.’ And sure enough it was.
At almost exactly the same time I recognised him, he recognised me. We’d never met before, yet here we were now, red face to red face in an almost deserted French village. Les deux rostbifs rouges, très extraordinaire!
‘My dear boy,’ he announced, ‘you’re always much taller.’
What the heck did that mean? And before ‘Hello’, or ‘How are you?’ Hilarious.
‘David, what a perfectly pink pleasure this is for both of us,’ I replied.
‘Indeed, indeed – hey, I’m staying at Andrew’s, you must come round for a drink one night.’
I had no idea what on earth he was talking about.
‘Oh, yes, er, right, of course, we must. I’m with my girlfriend you see.’
‘Excellent, then you must bring her along as well. I’ll get one of the girls on to it. Where are you?’
‘We’re at the Voile d’Or’.
‘Righty-ho, we’ll get you there, then.’ And with that he was off.
I still had no idea what he was talking about. Who was this Andrew to whom David was referring, and who were these girls?
I half expected to hear no more about it, but I have since learnt to take members of the old school at their word. Later that evening there was a call to our room.
‘Hello,’ Suzi said.
‘Ah, hello, this is Maddie Lloyd Webber here.’ Ah, it was that Andrew and those girls to whom David had been referring.
‘Frosty says you and young Mr Evans might like to come for dinner one evening. Would that be agreeable?’
Two evenings later, the ‘boys’, i.e. David and Andrew, were dispatched by the ‘girls’, i.e. Maddie and Carina (Frost), to fetch Suzi and me from our now familiar spot on the hotel terrace. Needless to say, after our second famous pick-up of the week, the waiters could not have been nicer to us for the remainder of our stay.
We sauntered down the road to Andrew’s house, which was no more than a few minutes in the direction of the Cap itself. Andrew, the great composer and impresario, walked ahead with Suzi while I trailed a few metres behind with David. Andrew and Suzi talked wine whilst David and I talked telly.
Now, there’s success and then there’s Lloyd Webber success, as we were about to discover.
When we arrived at our dinner venue, Andrew and Maddie’s house was nothing short of amazing. I won’t go into detail – that wouldn’t be fair – but let’s just say it was off the scale.
There is a wee tale, however, that I do feel at liberty to share with you.
‘Suzi and I had a delightful conversation walking up the hill,’ proffered Andrew as we sat down to commence dinner. ‘Suzi asked me what, in my opinion, was the greatest wine in the world, which, I believe, to be a 1947 Cheval Blanc.’ At this point David and several other guests nodded their approval.
‘So, if everyone is in agreement, I propose that after the Rothschild ‘55’ (of which there were two magnums opened on the table to have with the starter), ‘we move on to a couple of bottles of the best of the best for the main.’
Was I hearing this correctly? Had Mr Lloyd Webber just announced that we were to have not one but two bottles of the greatest wine the world had to offer? It certainly appeared so. Not only that, but how about the two babies currently taking pride of place in front of us; easily the best wine I’d ever had in my life thus far, but already about to be relegated to second place.
The night turned out to be fascinating on many counts; I have an idea most Lloyd Webber dinner parties do. The conversation was like a script from a film, with talk of presidents, prime ministers, gangsters and movie stars, all vying to be invited to this or get a part in that. There were also a few surprise visitors as the night went on, but those names are also for Lord Lloyd Webber’s book. If he ever writes one, what a book that will be.
When the moment came for the ‘47 Cheval Blanc to be served I’ll never forget Suzi’s face when Andrew asked her to taste it, on behalf of all the guests. She was as nervous as I’d ever seen her. This was going to be the sip of her life.
Suzi raised her glass, closed her eyes and pursed her lips in her usual expectant manner, but this time as she tilted the glass towards her the deep-red ruby liquid inside seemed to light up with an extra special promise of the magic to come. We all waited, almost scared to breathe, for her verdict.
‘Yum, that’s lovely!’ she declared, a brief response admittedly but an entirely acceptable one at that. Besides, what else is a girl supposed to say in front of a man who was not only our host and provider of the wine but also known to be one of the world’s most prominent wine connoisseurs?
Moreover, Suzi was absolutely right. The Cheval Blanc 1947 was indeed lovely.
I only wish I could taste it again today now that I know just a little bit more about what a good wine should taste like.
Upon our return to England, Suzi and I couldn’t resist following up our great wine adventure by paying a visit to our local vintners. The sommelier there was our very own grape guru and we couldn’t wait to ask him which wine, as far as he was concerned, was the best wine in the world.
Without missing a beat he replied, ‘Alors, mais bien sur, zere is no question, Monsieur, Madame, zat is zee famos 1947 Cheval Blanc – sans doute!’ His eyes misted over as he pronounced the name and vintage of the famous château. ‘Why you ask?’
‘Because we had some last week,’ I said, trying not to sound too pleased with our revelation.
‘Non Monsieur, ce n’est pas possible. Zee only person known to ‘ave zat wine ees your music man, Andrew Webber Lloyd. You cannot get it anywhere else!’
‘I know,’ I said, this time having to try really hard to avoid the smug zone. ‘We were at his house last week and he gave us some.’
Upon hearing this, our friendly wine merchant took a beat to see if we were joking, then for a brief moment looked as if he might cry, or faint, or both. Thankfully this was only a temporary glitch as he was soon back with us, insisting we tell him all about our experience, whilst offering us a glass each of something ‘he just happened to have open’ as a small bribe.
For the record, thank you Sir David for getting us the invite to the Lloyd Webbers in the first place. Thank you
Maddie Lloyd Webber for following up with the phone call. Thank you Suzi for striking up a wine conversation with Andrew whilst walking down the road with him. Thank you Andrew for being so generous as to share with us your liquid treasure. Thank you Monsieur Sommelier for providing a wonderful and enthusiastic epilogue to the piece. And finally, thank you God for inventing grapes in the first place.
TOP 10 PERKS I GAVE OUT AS A BOSS (#ulink_3a4c814e-2d52-547b-8fef-f75af1f1bc49)
10 Meals and booze – hundreds of thousands of pounds worth – fabulous fun all round
9 Holidays
8 Cars
7 Golf membership
6 A wheelchair!
5 Rolls-Royce and driver
4 Christmas bonuses – always (very important this one)
3 Share options adding up to millions
2 A year’s salary to close colleagues
1 Ten per cent of annual salary to every employee in the company
ANOTHER GOOD THING ABOUT THE SOUTH OF FRANCE is that Nice airport is less than two hours away from London by plane, very handy if one has to return at short notice; something that was very much on the cards, as Suzi and I had embarked on this last trip shortly after our Langan’s decision to sell the radio station. In the meantime, DC and I were keeping in touch via telephone.
‘How’s France?’ he asked during one call.
‘Oh, you know – quiet,’ I replied.
‘Yeah, right.’
‘How are things there?’ I enquired. ‘Equally quiet,’ he said, laughing. ‘Ah, I see.’ I realised there was a quid pro quo on offer here. ‘Alright,’ I sighed, ‘will you tell me yours if I tell you mine?’
After a potted version of what Suzi and I had been up to in the last few days, DC wasted no time in getting down to the business of our business.
Having made the decision to sell the Ginger Media Group, the next step was to figure out exactly how we might go about it. This was the main thrust of David’s industry over the last few days. Whilst I’d been off gallivanting with various members of the entertainment industry, DC had been hard at it.
‘We’ve met with the major players from the banks who handle this kind of thing,’ he began, ‘and I’m delighted to say that Goldman Sachs look like they might be willing to take our sale on.’
I had no idea of the significance of this but it sounded like I ought to. I asked David to enlighten me further.
‘Goldman Sachs,’ he explained, ‘like all the big banks, offer many corporate financial services, as long as there’s plenty of fat on the bone left over for them. The thing is, though, at a projected sale price of only £175 million to £300 million, we as a company would not normally be worth their while, let alone the wholehearted attention and focus of one of their hot-shot city-slicker sales teams.’
‘Ah, I see,’ I said, trying not to sound too underwhelmed.
Eventually, after more detailed explanation I got it – sort of – and began to understand why DC did what he did for a living and I talked on the radio.
As the week progressed, my crash course in how to sell a company continued and I couldn’t help feeling that all the stars were once again lining up in our favour. Every phone call seemed to be a step forward, every conversation taking us closer to our goal.
The man from Goldman Sachs was convinced he could pull off the kind of deal we were after, and much sooner rather than later by the sounds of it. In fact, when I arrived back in Britain he already had several very interested parties banging on our door. Three stood out in particular; they were the French company NRG, the American company Clear Channel, and from Scotland, the Scottish Media Group.
It was soon time for me, along with the rest of the board, to attend another series of secret meetings around more of those ghastly, bad-taste mahogany tables.
I was never quite sure during these meetings whether we were courting the buyers or the buyers were courting us. I suppose there was no question they all wanted to sleep with us, but who was going to take their clothes off first?
As the discussions developed, just as when we were buying the radio station ourselves, it appeared that I was the main concern. Although this time it was not because I was seen as a risk – on the contrary, I had almost doubled the radio audience since taking over The Breakfast Show, adding millions of pounds to the bottom line – but rather because, along with my hosting TFI Friday every week, a lot of the value of the company now rested on my shoulders. The big question on everyone’s lips was, if we did sell, would I stick around and carry on and if so, for how long, and how much would I want paying?
Furthermore, when it came to my future salary they wanted to know if I would be prepared to take some of my fee in shares as opposed to having it all in cash, thus providing me with an incentive to carry on performing at the highest level.
The answers to these questions were key to any potential new owner.
I assured anyone who would listen that I had no intention of going anywhere. After all, this was what I loved doing and especially so when it was on my own terms. When it came to the issue of my salary, I had already taken a massive wage cut to increase our profits and therefore our value, and as long as I still had shares in the new company, I said I would be more than willing to continue on the same terms.
This is exactly what the parties concerned wanted to hear and helped bring the best out when it came to bidding. Several firm offers were made for our little outfit, the most attractive of which was £225 million from the Scots.
Were they really going to make us over a £100-million profit on a company that had only existed for just over two years? Yes they bloomin’ well were, and what’s more they did.
In March 2000 the biggest deal of my life was completed and the instant the papers were signed, I was out of debt and my bank manager’s new best friend.
A few weeks later I was handed a ridiculously fat cheque. So fat, in fact, that I was officially, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, the highest paid entertainer in the UK.
There it was for real, an actual cheque with my name on the top line and a figure of twenty odd million pounds underneath it. I remember taking the cheque to the pub with me for the next week. My accountant went spare, not in case I lost it, but because of the amount of interest I was losing out on every day.
Everyone was happy, how could they not be? SMG had got their hands on the media company everyone was talking about, my team and I had all become significantly wealthier – five of them became millionaires overnight – and not only that, we all still had our jobs and were being paid a small fortune to do them.
This, however, was also when I came across my first example of the difference between proper businessmen and a DJ who just got lucky.
‘We must give everyone a slice of the action,’ I announced gleefully.
‘What do you mean?’ asked one of my now former backers.
‘Well, how about every member of staff receives a bonus for, let’s say, ten per cent of their annual salary, except for my immediate on-air team, whom I propose should receive a whole twelve months extra pay,’ I suggested.
‘Good for you,’ said the same guy, ‘but we’ll be returning all of our profit back to our shareholders, every penny I’m afraid. Good luck, though, it sounds like you’re going to need it with ideas like that.’
‘But why?’ I remember thinking at the time. ‘Why would we not want to reward everyone involved in our success?’
Of course his view was that only a handful of us had taken any risk, whereas our staff had taken no risk whatsoever, remaining secure and decently paid throughout.
Even though I had to concede he was perfectly astute in his summing up of the situation, in the end I gave everyone a bonus anyway. It all came out of my share of the pot and I was more than happy to do so. The bill came close to
£800,000 but out of what I had made it was more like a graze than an open wound. In fact, it felt great. For me at the time, new money was like fresh butter; I thought it should be spread around whilst there was still plenty left and it tasted nice. Idiot. Nice idiot, but still an idiot.
Having done my own bit of spreading, a party was declared. A party which I think may also have gone on for several days, I’m not quite sure. But then again, I was about to become unsure about a lot of things.
TOP 10 DODGY DECISIONS I HAVE MADE (#ulink_93f6ccbc-48a8-5553-9a80-e1a0ee860ded)
10 Buying 220 acres of land in Portugal for about £7 million with barely any planning permission for anything
9 Forming a new production company to make shows in which I had little or no interest
8 Producing other people generally
7 Agreeing to turn up to the Comedy Awards very much the worse for wear after being ‘found’ in a pub nearby
6 Donating £100,000 to Ken Livingstone’s mayoral campaign
5 Doubling it to £200,000 after Frank Dobson (Ken’s rival Labour candidate) criticised people for being ginger
4 Buying a Chelsea mansion because I was bored waiting for the pub to open
3 Withdrawing £300,000 in cash from the bank so I could pretend I had won on the horses, thus getting people to stay and have a drink with me
2 Taking the Scottish Media Group to court and losing comprehensively
1 Refusing to let a nice man from a big bank give me a cheque for £56 million
AS MY PART OF THE DEAL I had accepted forty per cent of the value of my old shares in cash, with the other sixty per cent being held as shares in the new company. These shares were to be released to me in three tranches of equal amounts over the next three years. After that it was up to me whether I sold them, kept them or lit fires with them.
Everyone at the time said I was mad to accept so much paper as opposed to real money, with the other main players in the deal negotiating a much higher percentage of cash payment for their equity.
‘Not so smart now, though,’ I thought a few days later, sitting in DC’s office watching the share price of the new company rocket from our sale price of £2.00 to a high of £3.76.
This meant that where I had been sitting on £30 million pounds’ worth of new equity at the point of sale I was now, just over a month later, sitting on a value of £56 million.
It was time for another conversation with Goldman Sachs, except now it was they who called me, shortly before dispatching a very nice man to come and visit me. He represented one of their investment funds.
‘Chris, we would like to offer you £3.76 per share for all your shares today,’ he said, sitting opposite me in an office I’d borrowed. ‘That, as I’m sure you know is £56 million,’ he went on. ‘What do you say?’
Well, to be honest I didn’t know what to say. I was already richer than I ever imagined I would be and these latest figures being tossed around were plain silly, but before I could even consider a decision, I had something to discuss with the nice gentleman on a point of clarification.
‘Er, I don’t actually have all the shares yet. I only receive them a third at a time over three years.’ Of course this was not news to him.
‘We are aware of that, Chris. What we are suggesting is that we buy them forward – that is to say we buy all your shares off you at an agreed price today, no matter when you get them. The price is firm.’
Now I have done many stupid things in my life but what I was about to do next is right up there at the top of the list. I suddenly convinced myself that there were dastardly goings on here, after all this was Goldman Sachs. Why were they so keen to totally buy me out and at such a premium?
‘Surely they must be up to something,’ I concluded to myself. ‘Why the hard sell?’
I tried to look intelligent for a second, tapping my fingers under my chin in a contemplative manner before declaring with gusto, ‘No thanks very much, I’m fine as I am. My shares are not for sale to you or anyone else.’ Upon hearing this, the nice gentleman from the big bank turned ashen. It was obvious to him I’d just lost my mind.
He tried to help me.
‘But Chris, do you realise how good a deal this is for you? It’s a guaranteed profit of almost one hundred per cent on the huge profit you’ve already made selling your company.’
But I was not to be moved. I was determined to turn down this second ‘offer of a lifetime’, no matter what. In fact the more he tried to reason with me, the more I became suspicious and convinced myself I was right.
By the time the nice man eventually gave up trying to give me £56 million for nothing more than a signature, he was incredulous.
In that one encounter I had become delusional. A fathead of seismic and cataclysmic proportions.
Whereas before I had understood my limitations when it came to business and accepted that thus far I had enjoyed no more than perhaps a highly fortuitous roll of the dice, I had now unwisely entered a state of mind where I presumed to actually know what I might be doing.
Mistakes don’t get much bigger than this.
The nice man from Goldman Sachs left the meeting shaking his head in disbelief. Over ten years later I’m still shaking mine. Excuse me for a moment whilst I just go outside to scream.
TOP 10 WAYS DRINKING TOO MUCH LEADS TO FOOLING YOURSELF (#ulink_3c9c37d6-74af-5e3a-bc35-2fd775a35e47)
10 You pass off being scruffy for being eccentric
9 You pass off being drunk for being creative
8 You pass off being an angry pain in the ass for being misunderstood
7 You pass off not eating for being fit and lithe
6 You claim contentment is for the unambitious
5 You see responsibility as the badge of the dull
4 You mistake standing in a bar for hours on end talking shite for having a good time
3 You only have relationships with people based around alcohol
2 You are genuinely surprised when people disappear to go home
1 You think that anyone who goes to the pub all day, every day, may actually have something to offer the world
I MIGHT NOW HAVE UNWITTINGLY EMBARKED upon the most rudderless stage of my still relatively young life but at least I no longer owned the radio station, which suddenly felt more like a plus than a minus. After just over two years at the helm of a major business, a weight of which I had hitherto been unaware seemed to lift off my shoulders, leaving me instantly feeling lighter.
Gone for ever were the days when I needed to worry that we were spending too much money on new equipment or vastly expensive poster campaigns that seemed to have little or no effect. I could also forget about the fact that we were paying immense amounts of money to several very average broadcasters to do little more than tell the time and announce a competition every now and again.
In many ways I was freer than I had ever been before. I had all day every day after The Breakfast Show untouched, TFI was still flying and I was now perceived as a whizz in business (except of course by the people who really knew what business was about). And all this before I turned thirty-four.
So where does such a heady cocktail of success and opportunity leave a guy? Well, in my case it left me as high as a kite after coming off air every morning, in the middle of one of the most exciting cities in the world, with no more work to do and a truckload of disposable income burning a hole in my bank account.
It’s obvious now, when I look back at those days, that I was destined to go off the rails.
How about this for a clue?
Meticulous planning would go into my ‘recreational’ activities after the show each day and I convinced myself that in spite of these ‘plans’ I still had a hold on reality. But it was the almost frightening level of attention to detail that should have alerted me to the fact that there might be the beginnings of a larger problem here.
It was almost as if the producer in me had been enrolled by the devil to ruin my life as efficiently and comprehensively as possible.
I would begin my post-show programme of preparation for the day with a trip to the gym. Ironic, given what was to follow, but in my mind the fitter I was, the more unhealthy a lifestyle I could get away with. I would work out for all I was worth for an hour every day, followed by a forty-minute in-and-out sauna session, rounded off with a sleep in the relaxation room – it was a very posh gym.
The relaxation room was a big circular space lined with white leather recliners, all of which were arranged in semicircular rows facing a huge fish tank. There was suitably soft lighting and subtle, ambient music that seemed to come from nowhere and the room was dominated by a huge planetarium-style curved ceiling that came fully into view the instant you pushed back on your chair.
It wasn’t difficult to drift off in such a soporific atmosphere unless one of the larger club members had drifted off before you and had settled into a period of full-on, fat-neck snoring. This could be very debilitating when it came to trying to sleep, although it did raise a smile on the odd occasion when one of these chaps snored so loudly they woke themselves up with a jolt.
Snorers permitting, I used to have around an hour’s sleep in the relaxation room; very deep, very rejuvenating sleep, or at least that’s what I convinced myself it was – enough to last me for the rest of the day.
After the magic kip, I would jump under a cold shower, get dressed and I was all set. This routine made me feel brand new, come lunchtime and, regardless of what I may have been up to the night before, I was more than ready to go again.
See what I mean? While the rest of the world was at work every day, I was preparing myself to get perfectly wasted and slowly but surely dealing myself out of the game.
After leaving the gym, lunch would begin. I’d usually rope in a few pals for company and we would start with a cold beer before moving quickly on to the wine, white or red, it really didn’t matter.
A couple of glasses in and that protective alcohol-induced soft haze would descend slowly before my eyes like an invisible film, insulating me from the real world. As it took effect, smiles became bigger, conversation flowed more freely and the concept of time became almost non-existent.
This weird time factor was the most fascinating aspect of what alcohol used to do for me, or to me, if you like. The hands on the clock lost all meaning. It was this disconnection from reality that I enjoyed the most. I saw booze as my key to the ever-elusive philosophy of living in the moment. Living in the ‘now’, as they say in all those books and not having to worry about the before or the after. Simply focusing on being in the present, except of course – it’s not that simple.
I’m not excusing my drinking or trying to justify it, I’m merely trying to explain what it felt like. I remember taking various drinks on board, and waiting for these periods of cerebral protection to kick in. With the thought of this safety blanket wrapped around me I could look forward to forgetting about the growing muddle of things in life I didn’t understand – or perhaps more accurately, didn’t want to face. Within a couple of hours I knew I would be free.
This pattern of behaviour became almost pathological, no matter what was going on in the rest of my life, whether it was the afternoon or evening, raining or sunny. In fact I dread to think of the number of beautiful, God-given days I lost to the allure of booze.
I invented all kinds of rules to convince myself I was still in charge. If I could put off the start to my drinking until at least twelve hours after I had last stopped, then I would deem that a good day, a great day in fact, fooling myself into thinking I had attained some kind of control. Ridiculous, I know, but this was typical of the kind of justification I would cling to.
I also made another ‘rule’ that once I’d had a drink I would not talk about anything to do with business. Everyone knew that when I was out, I was out. They were more than welcome to come and join in, but all talk of work and anything to do with it was strictly off-limits.
With lunch over, the company would often dwindle as most people had jobs to get back to. This is when I would find myself hanging around with strangers while I waited to see who was coming out to play next. I’d put in a few calls to friends who might be up for a drink or two later, before heading off to the fifth-floor bar at Harvey Nicks in Knightsbridge – the perfect venue for an afternoon pick-me-up.
Harvey Nicks bar was always guaranteed to be in full swing by mid-afternoon with ladies taking what they believed to be a well-deserved half-time glass of fizz in a break from another credit-card-melting shopping spree. ‘God help their husbands,’ I used to think, as it was obvious that the vast majority of these wives, mistresses and whatever the others were, probably did little else with their days other than perhaps associated visits to the hairdresser, manicurist and other diversions that cost as much money as possible.
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