The Chris Evans Breakfast Show
Radio 2
The dying weeks of 2009 piled on the angst. There we were – quivering in fear and submission about the state of the economy, the environment, security, education, health, political correctness, the price of fish, the savagery of dangerous dogs, the brazen unlicensed adults who dare to drive their kids to football practice, and a terrifying list of other things our leaders use to scare us – when yet another boulder of grief fell onto our creaking shoulders. Radio listeners were thrown into apoplectic despair at the desperate news that Sir Terry Wogan was leaving the airwaves.
This people’s broadcaster, this winsome wizard of the wireless was lamented and mourned even before he had hung up his headphones. Radio would never be the same again, we were told. Celebrities and journalists fell over themselves to pay their respects and it seemed there was not a dry eye across the nation. Truly, this man was a legendary saint of the airwaves and to remove him was tantamount to God’s punishment for all our wickedness.
Even before this bombshell announcement, we knew from the state of the world that we were all doomed anyway and with the rumours confirmed, we just stood on the edge of the abyss and wept at the passing of such a national institution. We felt nauseous at the tsunami of sugary tributes and compliments, but we managed to take several deep breaths and wearily began the struggle to piece together our shattered lives.
Except that we were all conned. Yes, Wogan was leaving the breakfast show on Radio 2, but he will still be broadcasting on the same station on Sunday mornings. Just to be clear, he left and then came back. So we went from boohoo to hooray in a flash. It was all smoke and mirrors and we were able to ease back from the precipice to get on with the things we are supposed to worry about. In truth, Wogan was getting to be an annoying presence anyway. What was once consistently fresh and chucklesome had become increasingly flaccid and dull. He still had moments of brilliance but, to my ears, it was time for him to move on from daily radio. Whether Chris Evans is the correct choice as his successor remains to be seen.
Evans portrays himself as an ordinary bloke, albeit with a rather irritating pitch to his voice. In his favour, he seems to know a thing or two about entertainment, so it will be interesting to see how he develops the breakfast format.
His first Radio 2 show was much heralded, as it had to be. He achieved a bit of a coup by adding newsreader Moira Stuart to his team, but I have to say that his first presentation was a little too excitable and eventually very annoying with jingles and background noise.
Whereas Wogan used silence and pauses to some effect, Evans feels the need to fill every second with sound. He presents like almost every other breakfast show host in the country. There seems to be a desperate urge to be wacky, which is OK in the right doses, but it can be very irritating as a daily diet.
In the end, criticism won’t matter, because Evans will survive. When the hype dies down, it will be just another radio entertainment show – nothing more, nothing less. The Beatles and Frank Sinatra featured early on the playlist as a spoonful of sugar for the easy listening crowd.
However, I suspect that many Radio 2 listeners will have been horrified at Evans’ noisy debut and many die-hard TOGS (Terry’s old gals and geezers) will have been spluttering their bran flakes all over the kitchen wireless. For Evans’ sake, he needs to calm down, stop being a big kid of a DJ and perhaps take this early morning appointment as an opportunity to mature in style and content.
Joe Cushnan
