It's such a bad idea, I'm surprised no media person has thought of it before: take one hugely popular early morning radio show, stick some cameras in the studio and broadcast it on the television. After his well-publicised (mainly by himself) split with BBC radio the ginger terrible Chris Evans brought his show and its covetable four million listeners over to Virgin Radio - the station he part owns, handily enough. Not having to comply with sniffy BBC regulations, Evans could run even more amok with his Zoo style of broadcasting and, as he became brasher and bolder, the ratings responded in kind until the simultaneous television broadcast became inevitable.
With such a dearth of anything half-decent being shown in the breakfast slot, it's little surprise that Sky 1 chose to take a tried-and-trusted mini-phenomenon like The Chris Evans Breakfast Show and shove it on the box. After all, four million people couldn't be wrong?
Surprisingly, the televised version of the show is not as bad as it could be and a lot better than it ought to be. By totally ignoring the cameras, Evans just gets on with what he does better than most and applies himself to the radio job in hand. It all lends a curious, voyeuristic feel to the proceedings as he babbles away on the phone to callers, sticks records into a machine and lines up news items like any other DJ.
The radio show goes out from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. but only one hour (7.30 a.m. to 8.30 a.m.) goes out on the television, so viewers are landed right in the middle of the action, which this morning is all about what happens when show's newsreader Mari-Anne ran into her immediate predecessor at a party the night before. "What happened? Was there a fight between the two of you?" asks Evans of a clearly embarrassed Mari-Anne who manages to fend off his questions until he says: "I heard you slept with someone after the party last night" (he didn't use the term "sleep" though). For the next five minutes, Mari-Anne has to patiently explain to listeners and viewers that after the party she stayed the night with a female researcher on the show because she couldn't get a cab and the sleeping arrangement was of the platonic "Morecambe and Wise" variety. The exasperated Mari-Anne then has to read the serious news headlines of the day which involve war, murder and EU monetary policies.
After a brisk run through the morning's papers and blowing through a cheap-looking musical instrument for a few minutes, Evans announces a new feature modelled on Consumer Watchdog - but called Consumer Puppy. This is where members of the team and callers are encouraged to relate stories about items they have bought which have turned out to be good value for money, or not.
A discussion out of nowhere about the merits of small electrical shops over their chain-store rivals results in Evans asking the telephonist to leave the studio, run down the street and report back, via mobile phone, on all the curious items displayed in the window of the small, local electrical shop. This the telephonist dutifully does, everyone nods their head thoughtfully and it's time for an ad break.
After more music and more news (which Evans asks Mari-Ann if she could read topless - she declines), there's the beginning of a new, listener-friendly feature called "Over the Photocopier" where people are asked to ring in with accounts of boozy office parties and most particularly "who copped off with who?". The phone lines go berserk as people ring in with their blow-by-blow accounts.
Everyone laughs, Evans bangs his hands on the table by way of appreciation and then suddenly the televised part of the show is over.
Similar in pace and tone to his own TFI Friday programme, Evans's Breakfast Show is bringing in viewers to Sky 1 the way he does to Channel 4, but there are already signs that his dumbed-down, funfilled manner of broadcasting has reached a peak. The latest radio figures reveal the most popular breakfast radio show in Britain belongs to the very antithesis of Evans. Terry Wogan's, Wake Up to Wogan on BBC Radio 2, now boasts 5.2 million listeners who tune in to hear the Limerick man crack "jokes" about his expanding waistline and play records by Phil Collins. Not many televisual possibilities here, but never mind.