Chris Evans, Virgin Radio Breakfast Show review: more of the same from the luckiest man in radio
From the first song played on Chris Evans’s new breakfast show on Virgin Radio, it was all about personality. Evans said how “blessed” and “grateful” he was to be in his new job, and then, after acknowledging that everyone always wonders which song a new DJ will choose to play as their first record on a new show, he said, “I just press buttons, I don’t play songs”. And so he handed over to The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft, who played the band’s Nineties hit Lucky Man live in the studio.
It was a bold bit of territory-marking. Lucky Man was originally in the charts in 1997, the year that Chris Evans originally started presenting Virgin Radio’s breakfast show. As Evans propels his radio shows through the force of his own charisma, bringing everything else into orbit around him, we’re invited to take the song’s lyrics - “It’s just a change in me, something in my liberty... I'm a lucky man” - as a personal statement of the liberation that Evans feels in his new, old stomping ground.
Fans of Evans’s previous breakfast show on BBC Radio 2 will be delighted to hear that it's more of the same. In fact, it’s eerily similar. The team is almost identical — Vassos Alexander is still doing the sport and Rachel Horne the travel, though Moira Stuart, formerly on news, has defected to Classic FM — and the jingles were the same. He even played his hallmark clip from Dean Martin’s How D' Ya Like Your Eggs in the Morning just after 8am.
That meant that the energy, one of the most successful parts of Evans’s breakfast show experience, was identical: optimistic, loud, and greeting the day with full-beam sunshine. Evans seemed right at home, to the point where I could swear I heard him catch himself almost saying “this is Radio 2” at one point. Evans played up the family feel of his show even more than he had done at the BBC, with his young sons, Eli and Noah, involved in some cute pre-recorded idents.
Richard Ashcroft hung around to play more tracks, including a spectacular rendition of The Drugs Don’t Work. The other stand-out guest was Paul Whitehouse, very much the life and soul, wisecracking about his heart condition and the upcoming Only Fools and Horses musical. Evans was also joined by Cold Feet’s Fay Ripley and comedians Romesh Ranganathan and Rob Becket.
Comparisons between Virgin and Radio 2 are inevitable. Other breakfast radio shows are of course available, but Zoe Ball and Evans have an on-air rivalry going back decades, when they went head-to-head at sunrise on Virgin and Radio 1 in the Nineties. On the strength of the early showings from both of them, Ball’s is the more enjoyable listening experience. It’s more laid back and inclusive, where Evans’s show this morning could sometimes feel like so much high-rolling posturing (I'd be surprised if he's earning any less than the £1.6m the BBC were paying him).
Actually listening to the digital-only Virgin Radio isn’t easy. Though the network previously existed under different owners, the current Virgin Radio only launched in 2016, which means that many people will have to re-tune their DAB radios to receive it, and most cars won't be able to access it at all. I listened via an app on my mobile phone, which at least meant I could take it into the bathroom.
All this matters because anything that makes listening an effort is likely to seriously reduce the potential ratings the show gets. Maybe in a couple of years’ time technology will have caught up to the point where listening becomes seamless, but until then, the show's party atmosphere feels slightly under-attended.
Also affecting the mood was the inescapable aura of commercial radio obligation. The show made much of the fact that it is “ad-free”: “We have no ads because of these lovely people,” said Evans, who then immediately played a short clip promoting Sky.
Evans and his team were pretty transparent about this, repeating several times that the Sky were “commercial partners” and highlighting the content they’ll be mentioning as part of that arrangement. But come off it: a show can't truly be “ad-free” while also being full of, er, ads for Sky. Stop treating listeners like suckers.
Evans’s previous relationship with Virgin didn’t end well – he left in 2000 after falling ratings and failing to show up to work – but this morning he was expressing firm confidence in his new three year contract. He is a skilled broadcaster and the consistency of his relentlessly positive attitude is a rare feat on radio.
And yet. Evans said the reason for switching stations was nothing to do with the money (I'd be surprised if he's earning any less than the £1.6m the BBC were paying him), and instead just because he wanted to “keep climbing mountains” rather than staying put and admiring the view. After this first outing, it sounded as if he was on top of exactly the same mountain. Only, perhaps, wearing more expensive shoes.
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