Nine months after he abandoned BBC Radio 1, Chris Evans is back on British radio. As of this week, he's doing a morning show on Richard Branson's commercial station, Virgin Radio - where he is in competition with his old employers. Irish audiences will probably know Evans best from television, where his late-night show, TFI Friday, has been a consistent ratings-puller on Channel 4. However, while he has been involved in a few hit TV programmes, his dominance since joining the BBC in 1995 has been on the radio, where he has been described as "the most popular broadcaster of his generation", gaining a daily audience of 7.5 million. He certainly didn't get there by being Mr Nice Guy. "Rude" is the most printable adjective that has been applied to his personality, both on and off the air.
Regular features of the Evans "breakfast show" included "In Bed with Your Girlfriend", and he once encouraged two women guests to do a striptease on air. The rudeness extended to his assistants: he repeatedly asked one about her sex life, and when another was caught trying to fiddle an extra £10 from the show's expense account, Evans demanded a written apology - then read it aloud on air. He could also be rude up the BBC hierarchy. His boss, Radio 1's controller Matthew Bannister, became "the fat controller", in a reference to the Thomas the Tank Engine stories.
Last November, he outraged many people involved in women's sports by joking about the sexuality of the members of England's netball and hockey teams. One official of the All England Netball Association described him as "a turd".
He has never been known to apologise for any of the many on-air insults that have caused complaints.
But it appeared that the more outrageous he became, the more the audience grew. When he quit the breakfast show earlier this year, it wasn't because the BBC couldn't stick his rudeness - it was because the company wouldn't give him Fridays off. There were signs, of course, that his personality was grating on people: he was booed by the celebrity audience at the British Comedy Awards, and voted "Worst Person on TV" in a Smash Hits poll. But this wasn't reflected in the ratings. Evans, it seems, was the presenter people "love to hate" - a status that means people keep listening even if they're offended.
Time will tell if he can maintain this status on his return to radio. Some of the omens are not good: not long before he left the BBC, he complained on-air about the toll his lifestyle and early-morning starts were taking: "I'm here against doctor's orders. I'm medically unsound and should not be on the radio."
Will the listeners agree?
