Evans - Memoirs of a Fruitcake

To my mum Minnie, my daughter Jade, my son Noah and most of all to my wife Natasha, who put up with me spending six months in the garage with my past instead of spending six months in the house with the present.

And to my balls, which thankfully I still have after Tash capitulated on her threat to cut them off if I hadnt finished this book before our summer holidays in Portugal, something I failed spectacularly to do.

Born with ginger hair and glasses to Mum and Dad (Martin and Minnie) in Warrington in 1966

Younger brother to Diane and David

Father died of cancer when I was thirteen and life changed soon afterwards, I obtained my first job in a newsagents

Heard Timmy Mallett on the radio, fell in love with the wireless

Secured job at Piccadilly Radio in Manchester, as tea boy

Moved down to London, worked at BBC Greater London Radio

Was chosen to front The Big Breakfast with Gaby Roslin and Zig and Zag

Created Dont Forget Your Toothbrush, followed by TFI Friday, for Channel 4

Took up post as host of Radio 1 Breakfast Show, walked out after a year (idiot)

Bought Virgin Radio from Richard Branson after borrowing 85 million

NOW THERE ARE SHOWBIZ STORIES and then there are stories about showbiz the latter for me infinitely more interesting and compelling. These are the stories behind the stories if you like, about how the business works and sometimes doesnt work and what kind of people want, or more often need, to be part of such madness.

Thats what this book is. It is my story of my madness and my experience in show business. It was always a dream, its often been a nightmare, but its never been dull. If my first book was the climb up the mountain to fame, fortune and the life I thought I wanted, this second volume sees me diving head first off a cliff and then trying to figure out why.

In the days when I took over the ownership of Virgin I was a live for today kind of guy. I tended to jump in with both feet, and worry about the consequences later.

Its only recently that I have woken up to the fact that the live for today philosophy, although often liberating and fantastically exciting at the time, can be damaging and destructive to almost everything you hold dear. Of course theres nothing wrong with the pursuit of ones hopes and aspirations but real life must always be taken care of first or at least very quickly afterwards, because to achieve success at the expense of a single other human being is wholly unacceptable.

While its admirable to strive with energy and ambition fuelling your tank, this does not serve as an excuse to start hundreds of things off willy-nilly without at least giving some thought to how they might be concluded. This is the number one crime of the irresponsible dream seeker whose lives are littered with false starts, broken middles and a severe lack of happy endings.

Its better to enjoy happiness and a clear conscience by doing the right things by people along the way. The keys to the kingdom of contentment and a good nights sleep are only a few decent decisions away. Talent is not an excuse to use and abuse or take short cuts.

So lets see how little of this I realised when I needed to, shall we? Because, as you will soon see, having bought my radio station for all the right reasons things would end up going very, very wrong.

Little did I know that in the ensuing years, I would enter the list of the top 500 richest people in Britain whilst simultaneously becoming a lout, a drunk, dangerously unstable, generally out of control, almost completely friendless, full of hubris, and the unhappiest Id ever been. These darkest of days would also see me plumb the depths of self-destruction, usually the more publicly the better and not care who witnessed me doing it.

Why I didnt take this journey to its mortal conclusion and how the hell I got my life back on track I am as keen to discover as you so lets go.

Buckle up my friends this one really is a bumpy ride.

Chris Moyles

Gaby Roslin

Terry Wogan

Vernon Kay

Danny Baker

Jimmy Tarbuck

Lionel Blair

Melanie Sykes

Terry Venables

Jonathan Ross

SO WHERE WERE WE?

Ah yes, October 1997 and I had launched my breakfast show on Virgin Radio a great gig, except that Virgins owner, Richard Branson, was about to sell the station to the Capital Group, whereupon I would be out of a job in just ten weeks; barely enough time to get used to the decor.

Thats when the highly precocious ruse occurred in my ludicrously over-ambitious mind; to see if I could buy the station myself. It was the craziest of my not inconsiderable list of crazy ideas to date, but if I wanted to stay on the air then I had no choice. After my disastrously self-indulgent, ego-fuelled departure from Radio 1 only a few months before, my reputation was in tatters, rendering me virtually unemployable.

Astonishingly, with the help of some major financial backers, and with a top team around me, I pulled it off. Two months after joining the station I snapped up the ownership of Virgin Radio from under the noses of the Capital Group, overnight finding myself breakfast DJ and proprietor rolled into one.

Id been in a few fairly daunting positions before in my rollercoaster career, though nothing quite on this scale. However, my owning Virgin Radio was only ever destined to be a temporary proprietorship. I was always going to have to sell the station to repay the people who had lent me the money in the first place a story we will get to all in good time.

Meanwhile, I was still presenting TFI Friday every week, so my new job of media mogul had to be fitted in between my morning radio programme and the Friday TV show. But hey, I was a young man with vast amounts of energy, limitless enthusiasm and more ideas than I knew what to do with. What could possibly go wrong? I asked myself.

Answer; everything. But not just quite yet.

There I was, king of my own media castle, albeit with the minor inconvenience of owing the banks, my investors and Richard Branson 85 million.

Was I nervous? Not in the least. Not a lot can make you nervous after borrowing 85 million unless its the possibility of losing it. But I wasnt going there. I was excited and couldnt wait to get to grips with my new empire.

In the beginning, before I discovered there was also a downside to being the boss, what turned me on most was the freedom I had to be creative. I was now in a similar position to many of my heroes, two in particular, namely Charlie Chaplin and Jim Henson. I have been a fan of both for years.

Chaplin was a truly exceptional man, almost more so for his business acumen than his on-screen genius. As soon as Charlie could afford to, he bought his own studios on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, where he began to self-fund and self-produce some of his most famous movies. With independence came control and with control came purity and perfection. He could green-light his own projects and make them exactly as he wanted without having to kowtow to any studio egomaniacs.