Christopher James Evans (born 1 April 1966) is an English television presenter, radio DJ, and producer for radio and television.
Evans began his broadcasting career working for Piccadilly Radio, Manchester, as a teenager, before moving to London as a presenter for the BBC's BBC Radio London and then Channel 4 television, where The Big Breakfast made him a star. Soon he was able to dictate highly favourable terms, allowing him to broadcast on competing radio and TV stations. Slots like Radio 1 Breakfast and TFI Friday provided a mix of celebrity interviews, music and comic games, delivered in an irreverent style that attracted high ratings, though often also generated significant numbers of complaints. By 2000, he was the UK's highest paid entertainer, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. In the tax year to April 2017, he was the BBC's highest-paid presenter, earning just under £2.25 million annually.
In 2005, Evans started a new career on BBC Radio 2, hosting his Drivetime programme in April 2006, before moving in 2010 to host The Chris Evans Breakfast Show every weekday morning. He presented The One Show on Fridays between 2010 and 2015. Between 2011 and 2018, he co-hosted Radio 2 Live in Hyde Park. In 2015, he signed a three-year deal to lead a new Top Gear line-up and presented a revival series of TFI Friday. On 4 July 2016, he announced that he would be stepping down as presenter of Top Gear.
On 3 September 2018, Evans announced that he would be leaving The Radio 2 Breakfast Show on Christmas Eve, and would be going to Virgin Radio UK to present its breakfast show. He moved from BBC Radio 2 with most of his regular team.
Early life Evans was born in Warrington, England, the youngest child of bookmaker and health authority wages clerk Martin Joseph Evans (12 November 1921 – 25 April 1979),Births, Marriages & Deaths Index, England and Wales and Minnie Beardsall (1926–2018), who managed a corner shop. His siblings are brother David (born 1953) and sister Diane (born 1963). He started his schooling at St Margaret's Church of England Infants and Junior School, and later the Junior School in Orford, Warrington. Evans's father died of colorectal cancer, and his mother was a breast cancer survivor.
Evans passed the Eleven-Plus exam and started at Boteler Grammar School, Warrington. After the death of his father on Wednesday, 24 April 1979, the 13-year-old Evans took part-time work at an outlet of T. J. & B. McLoughlin's newsagent–tobacconist in Woolston, and ran an alternative tuck-shop at Padgate High School, which was a comprehensive school he attended for the final three years of his secondary education. Evans left secondary school aged 16 after moving into the sixth form, and then had a number of dead-end jobs in and around Warrington, including at a private detective agency and, notoriously, as a "Tarzan-ogram".
Career
Early career Evans began his professional career at Piccadilly Radio, Manchester, in 1983, where he had previously had unpaid schoolboy work. Until 1984 Evans had three jobs: as an assistant to Timmy Mallett, and playing a character on his show called 'Nobby Nolevel' ('No 'O' Level'); acting as a disc jockey in the evenings at local pubs when he was not at Piccadilly Radio; and still working at the newsagents, opening up daily at 5 a.m. to sort out the newspaper deliveries.
Evans switched to a full-time position at the station in 1984, his new role including being driven around the Manchester area in the radio car to turn up at listeners' houses. In addition he was producer to presenter James H. Reeve. Following this he presented a weekday graveyard slot with competitions and segments where listeners had opportunities to sell their belongings on air.
After working as a producer on Richard Branson's service The Superstation, where he produced material for Jonathan Ross, Evans went on to work at the newly launched BBC Greater London Radio, first as a producer on Emma Freud's mid-morning show, then on Weekend Breakfast with Danny Baker.
Owing to his success working on both shows, Evans was offered a producer role at BBC Radio 1, but was persuaded to stay at GLR after station controller Matthew Bannister gave him the chance to present his own show, taking over Saturday afternoons in early 1990. Three months later, he started presenting The Greenhouse, a Monday-to-Thursday evening show; he remained in this slot until the end of 1990.
In early 1991, as a result of his first regular TV hosting work presenting the Power Up breakfast show on The Power Station for British Satellite Broadcasting, Evans moved to presenting Round at Chris's, every Saturday morning from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., which he continued to present until April 1993.
Career success In addition to his Saturday morning show on GLR, in March 1992 Evans began presenting a Sunday afternoon show on BBC Radio 1, replacing Phillip Schofield. His show, Too Much Gravy, was broadcast from 14:30 to 16:00 and ended in September 1992. His move to Radio 1 was short-lived but seen as a huge success, with controller Johnny Beerling later admitting he wished he'd offered Evans a full-time show there and then. At the time, however, Evans objected that Radio 1 had attempted to constrain his style, preventing him from using the "zoo" format, allegedly because Steve Wright was already doing that on the station.
In April 1993, Evans left GLR and joined the new Virgin Radio, to host a Saturday morning show.
The Big Breakfast
Evans's departure from radio was in part so he could devote his time to the new Channel 4 breakfast television show, The Big Breakfast, from 28 September 1992. He co-hosted the show with Gaby Roslin.
Evans left The Big Breakfast on 29 September 1994 and formed his own television production company, Ginger Productions. Its first major programme, Don't Forget Your Toothbrush, was broadcast between 1994 and 1995. The original concepts proved to be lucrative for Evans as its format was sold to numerous foreign broadcasters.
The Radio 1 Breakfast Show In April 1995, Evans returned to radio to host the flagship Radio 1 Breakfast Show. Evans negotiated into his contract with Radio 1 a clause allowing him to still make television programmes, and specifically an option to make a Friday night programme for Channel 4. A further clause required the Breakfast Show to be produced independently by Evans's Ginger company, rather than in-house by BBC Radio.Red letter day for Chris Evans, bbc.co.uk, 11 January 2010
Allowed to create the "zoo" format he had previously been disallowed from performing on Radio 1, Evans was given a free rein by his friend, the station's controller Matthew Bannister. Critics hated innuendo-laden features like Honk Your Horn and in Bed with Your Girlfriend, but Evans put on 600,000 new listeners over Steve Wright – one for every £5 spent on salary and advertising. The effect also flowed through into the listening figures for later programmes. The audience grew as the breakfast format became more outrageous: humiliating assistant Holly Samos by repeatedly asking her about her sex life (Evans and Samos were reportedly in a relationship at periods through their time working together), and encouraging two female guests to perform a strip show on live radio. The show's highest listening figure reached 7.5 million.
Evans began making editions of Channel 4's TFI Friday from 1996. The show – devised, produced and hosted by Evans through his Ginger Media company – combined celebrity interviews, musical guests and daft games and competitions. Largely based on the successful formula of his radio show, it was initially a big success. However, as the success of both shows peaked, combined with a string of celebrity relationships and highly publicised nights drinking with friends Danny Baker and Paul Gascoigne, the strain began to show, and a model emerged described as a "template for his approach to all his subsequent projects – an abundance of enthusiasm at the beginning which eventually falls prey to boredom and shiftlessness."
Beginning to think he was indispensable at Radio 1, the first big falling-out with management came in December 1995 after taking his crew out on a 17-hour pub-crawl which ended two hours before they were due on air: Evans was fined one day's pay, £7,000. In 1996, broadcasting watchdogs investigated a continual trail of complaints against the show: Radio 1 refused to comment, and Evans never apologised. Evans also made increasing public demands of the Radio 1 management: after taking an extra week of unplanned holiday, Evans chose to turn up half an hour late for his 06:30 show and then demanded that his hours were changed so that it was a permanent fixture – this request was accepted.
However, following the summer break things got decidedly worse. Criticised by the broadcasting watchdog for a tasteless joke about Holocaust victim Anne Frank, Evans countered with an item about haemorrhoids. Asked by Bannister to watch the rules, Evans the next day branded Bannister "The Fat Controller". In November, Evans announced on air that he was medically unfit to be on the radio – Bannister re-negotiated his contract to double his holiday to twice that of other Radio 1 DJs. After more publicised public drinking and self-confessed illness, Evans's spell at the station ended in January 1997 when he quit after his demand not to host the show on Friday (to have a full day getting ready for his TV show) was not accepted.
The Radio 1 Breakfast Show was taken over by Mark and Lard (Mark Radcliffe and Marc Riley). Ratings fell significantly and they were replaced after eight months with the relatively unknown Kevin Greening and the well-known children's TV presenter Zoe Ball. Their tenure started on 13 October 1997.
Virgin Radio During a holiday in Killarney, Evans listened to the Irish broadcaster Gerry Ryan on the radio. Evans claims the variety on Ryan's show made him want to return to radio. Evans was then hired by Virgin Radio to host its breakfast show, prompting an immediate upsurge in station listening figures of 1.8 million to 2.6 million. His first show was on 13 October 1997, the same day as Kevin Greening and Zoë Ball on Radio 1. Starting at 7:00 am, Evans's crew presented the show from Monday to Friday, but without Evans on a Friday.
As Richard Branson had decided to reduce his media holding, he began talks to sell the station to Capital Radio in a deal that would have given him 10% of holding company Capital Group. As this became public knowledge, Evans, who did not want to work for Capital, publicly dismissed them as "a bleating, blowing asthmatic dog." On 9 December, with the assistance of investors, Evans's vehicle Ginger Media Group bought Virgin Radio from Branson for £85 million, to control the interests both of Ginger Productions and Virgin Radio. Both Apax Partners and Branson each owned 20% of Ginger Media Group, while Evans and his investors owned the remaining 60%. The group later engaged in the prospect of buying the Daily Star newspaper, but decided against from commercial angles.