BOOK OF THE DAY: KEVIN COURTNEYreviews It's Not What You ThinkBy Chris Evans Harper Collins 334pp. £20
TOP 10 reasons to read this book:
1. It really is not what you think.
2. Each chapter opens with a neat top 10 list, eg Legends I’ve Worked With, Most Significant Cars In My Life and Things to Do When the Cards are Stacked Against You.
3. It has some great insights into the inner workings of radio.
4. It has some great insights into the inner workings of the author’s mind.
5. Timmy Mallett is in it.
6. Zig and Zag are in it too.
7. There’s a sexy scene in a tent with Kim Wilde.
8. Richard Branson is like Aragorn in Lord of the Rings, a bit scary and threatening at first but turning out to be a top bloke in the end.
9. It climaxes with a David and Goliath tale of a small production company taking on a giant media conglomeration – and winning.
10. At the end of the book, you’ll think differently about this bloke Chris.
In the 1990s, Evans was the ginger-haired golden boy of British broadcasting, the on-air incarnation of cool Britannia. He spectacularly threw it all away when he walked out of his breakfast show at BBC Radio 1. Then, even more spectacularly, he got it all back again when his Ginger Media Group bought Virgin Radio for £80 million, selling it three years later for more than £200 million.
This is the first volume of his two-part autobiography, and covers his growing up years in Warrington, the youngest child of a bookmaker; his schooldays, when he spotted an early financial opportunity to set up a tuckshop at his school; his first radio job at Manchester's Piccadilly Radio, working with the mighty Timmy Mallett; his meteoric rise via such ratings-grabbing TV shows as Don't Forget Your Toothbrushand TFI Friday;his equally meteoric plunge into personal and professional mayhem; right up to his biggest gamble ever – buying his own radio station.
There are two schools of thought about Evans. One has him a red-haired clown who shouldn’t be let within 500 yards of a microphone. The other has him a red-haired clown who happens to be very good at what he does. The former camp are in for a rude awakening on January 11th, 2010, when Evans takes over Terry Wogan’s morning slot on BBC Radio Two. It’s the latest stage in the rehabilitation of a man who, by his own admission, had completely lost the plot, not to mention the respect of his peers and public.
Spend just a few pages with Evans, and it’s clear that his love of radio runs deeper than the zany “zoo” style of presentation that made him a household name. Walking out on his dream job at BBC Radio 1 was, he writes, “the most colossal, misguided error of judgment”.
Evans’s road to recovery began in Killarney, where he heard Gerry Ryan on 2FM and realised he missed the special bond between a good broadcaster and his audience. “If I was looking to escape the magic of radio,” he writes, “I had chosen entirely the wrong country to do it in.”
On hearing that Evans wanted to get back on the radio, his manager joked, “the only way you could get a gig at the moment would be if you owned your own radio station”. Within a few months, Evans’s Ginger Media company would be in serious negotiations with Richard Branson for the purchase of Virgin Radio.
From radio swashbuckler to TV daredevil to high-finance high-roller – there are thrills and spills a-plenty to keep you hanging on for the next instalment.
Kevin Courtney is an Irish Timesjournalist
