10 Chris Moyles
9 Gaby Roslin
8 Terry Wogan
7 Vernon Kay
6 Danny Baker
5 Jimmy Tarbuck
4 Lionel Blair
3 Melanie Sykes
2 Terry Venables
1 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 Virgin’s 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.
That’s 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.
I’d 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 it’s the possibility of losing it. But I wasn’t going there. I was excited and couldn’t 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.
This situation only served to bolster Charlie’s already formidable confidence, and with talent plus creative control equalling power and profitability, before he was thirty the boy from the slums of south London was earning well in excess of $1 million a year – back in the 1920s!
Jim Henson was equally autonomous with his legendary Muppet productions almost half a century later; the beautifully ironic connection being that he bought the old Chaplin studios to use as his base. My favourite part of this story is that whereas in Chaplin’s day there was a giant statue of his tramp standing proudly on the roof for all of Tinseltown to see, when Jim moved in he erected a similar-sized statue of Kermit the Frog. And best of all – in homage to the studio’s former illustrious owner – Henson also dressed the world’s favourite amphibian as Chaplin’s tramp, complete with black suit, funny shoes, cane and bowler hat. This cleverest of tributes can still be seen atop the studio roof today.
With thoughts like these racing through my mind, I couldn’t help feeling inspired by the massive opportunities that lay ahead of me. I too owned my own company, the Ginger Media Group, consisting now of a television production arm – Ginger Productions, which made TFI Friday – and a radio station. I also had a five-year lease on my own television studio, and I was surrounded by producers, writers and people who could make things happen at a moment’s notice.
Almost straight away I decided to take advantage of my new-found freedom.
It was a Saturday morning and I’d just been for a run. Having returned home a little sweaty I decided to treat myself to a few bubbles and a good old soak – I love the lure of the lather. I lay there luxuriating and listening to one of our competitors, broadcasting that it was the first day of the footy season and how we should all be lapping it up.
The presenter and his various contributors sounded progressively more ebullient, and as the show went on, the more I felt we were missing out as my station had little if anything to do with football. This was a big day for millions of people and we were not part of it.
‘Hang on a minute, I don’t need to feel like this anymore,’ I thought. ‘I own the damn radio station, I can do anything I want and I don’t have to ask anyone’s permission.’
I jumped out of the bath, rang the studio and told the DJ who was currently on air to inform the guy who followed him that he could have the afternoon off. I was on my way in and I would be presenting our new Saturday afternoon sports and music show.
‘Really, what shall I say it’s called?’ he asked.
‘Oh, er – hang on a sec, I’ll ring you back with that.’
I hadn’t considered a title. Two minutes later I was back on the phone.
‘Tell him – and the listeners whilst you’re at it – that the new show is called Rock and Roll Football. Music and footy all the way till final score. It does exactly what it says on the tin.’
After making a quick cup of tea and throwing on some clothes, I began a ring round of the biggest footie heads I knew and asked them to come and help me. To a man they obliged, although they had little idea as to what exactly they might be helping me with.
That afternoon we launched one of the most straightforward shows I have ever been involved in. All we did was play music whilst watching Sky Sports Soccer Saturday with the sound down. Every time there was a goal we let our listeners know where it had occurred and who had scored it, then it was back to the music. At half-time we would have a quick ‘round the grounds’ catch-up, also featuring different halftime treats from different clubs; curries, kebabs, pork pies, pasties and whatever else fans were munching on.
Come five o’clock we presented our own slapdash version of the classified results, followed by any breaking footie stories, followed by half an hour of going-out music, which was exactly what we had intended to do the second the original programme had come off air.
Rock and Roll Football remained on air every Saturday afternoon during the football season until 2008 – almost a decade after I had left the radio station, picking up some pretty hefty sponsors along the way. And all because of a sweaty jog resulting in me needing a bath and a few bubbles.
As my reign as boss continued, my creative freedom quickly extended to hiring new talent that I thought might strengthen our line-up. My first top-three signings were ex-England football manager Terry Venables, BRMB’s Harriet Scott and the über-famous Jonathan