ANOTHER RADIO MAN, Christopher Pressure Evans (that was his middle name) got started when he followed Timmy Mallett home from Piccadilly Radio and got a job as his assistant. He was later promoted to his own show but got sacked for talking about cooking cats. He became a producer instead, and got a job at GLR where again he later graduated to a presenter with his Saturday morning shows becoming legendary listening. His first steps into telly came on The Power Station, BSB’s pop channel, in 1990, where he presented a breakfast show every morning to an audience of about 12 people, hence nobody batted an eyelid when he got his nob out on at least one occasion. After the channel closed, his next venture was TV MAYHEM, a Saturday morning show on TVam (hence the name) in 1991. Evans wore the same clothes each week (red shirt, jeans, baseball cap) apparently to appear more like a cartoon character, and his hapless assistant was later BIG BREAKFAST researcher and Banzai producer Gary Monaghan, whose role was more or less to get buckets of water thrown over him in the Wacky Weekend Weather sketch that concluded each edition. The show was commissioned for 40 weeks, but after six TVam lost their franchise and the programme was immediately axed.
In the summer of 1992 Evans supplemented his GLR work with TOO MUCH GRAVY, a Sunday afternoon show on Radio One. This didn’t really work out, but he did get to do a proper Radio 1 Roadshow one week, which he later claimed he was awful at. After six months, though, he gave it up because he had a new job – fronting The Big Breakfast. It was third time lucky for Evans on the early shift, and never has he been more creative and amusing as he was during his two years at the Lock Keepers Cottages. When he left in 1994, he was undoubtedly one of the most famous people in the country. While on the show he developed DON’T FORGET YOUR TOOTHBRUSH, which was a brilliant show and every light entertainment producer seems to be trying to remake it to this day. After two series, though, he gave it up, and instead moved back to Radio 1 (he’d returned once before, for a one-off show at Christmas 1992, where at the end he said “They’ve told me I’ve got a job here for life if I want it”) to do the breakfast show. For a while, this was required listening, much as TFI FRIDAY was required viewing – the latter mostly thanks to Danny Baker on scripting duties. However both went seriously off the boil as Evans became increasingly lazy. Complaints, slaggings and abrupt departures followed, and things hardly improved with the self-indulgent golf travelogue TEE TIME in 1998. By 2000 TFI was dying on its arse, and the show was axed, but Evans resigned before the final show, presumably so as not to be associated with a dying format. Since then he’s not done any proper presenting, and is now responsible for LIVE WITH CHRIS MOYLES. That’s progress for you.
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