Chris Evans
Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010
BBC
4.4 • 804 Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2005
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the broadcaster Chris Evans. He is one of the most creative and influential broadcasters of his generation. He has been hailed as the saviour of more than one radio station and made a name for himself on television too - first of all on The Big Breakfast, but also with his own formats, including Don't Forget Your Toothbrush and TFI Friday. He's won a clutch of awards and, by taking over Virgin radio, made himself a millionaire many times over. But he also gained a reputation for being brash and bullying; he walked out on more than one job and his drinking binges were splashed across the tabloids.
Since those days he's married and divorced, lived in America and, more recently, pursued a more peaceful existence - keeping chickens and growing vegetables at his cottage in the English countryside.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Here, There and Everywhere by The Beatles Book: Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Luxury: A pair of swimming goggles with prescription lenses
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy. |
| 0:05.4 | My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:10.7 | The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that. |
| 0:17.4 | With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to |
| 0:22.4 | helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all |
| 0:28.1 | put together by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life, |
| 0:34.9 | check out BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Krista Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. |
| 0:42.2 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:45.3 | The program was originally broadcast in 2005, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. |
| 0:50.7 | Music was Sue Lawley. |
| 1:07.9 | My castaway this week is a broadcaster. |
| 1:12.3 | During the 1990s, he was the whiz kid of the airwaves,, the man with a magic touch, whose every show on radio or television caught the mood of the nation and drew tumultuous |
| 1:17.6 | response. Born and brought up in a working-class family in Warrington in Lancashire, he got a job |
| 1:22.6 | in local radio in Manchester and then moved to London, where first on local radio and then with television shows |
| 1:28.6 | such as the Big Breakfast and TFI Friday, he became popular, rich and famous. His noisy, boozy |
| 1:35.6 | lifestyle matched his irreverent image, and so did the rouse he seemed to have wherever he worked, |
| 1:40.5 | Radio 1 and Virgin Radio, where he'd succeeded in buying the whole station and making |
| 1:44.6 | himself a millionaire. But in the end, the roistering and the arguments seemed to overtake |
| 1:49.7 | him, and he announced he was taking a long holiday. It's all been pretty quiet since then, |
| 1:55.0 | but this autumn he landed back gently on Radio 2 as presenter of its Saturday afternoon show. |
| 2:01.4 | I still haven't got a clue how I got here, he says, except that I've got a load of energy. |
| 2:06.6 | That's the one thing that's been constant through my life. |
... |
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