by Chris Evans
Despite Billie’s best efforts to reassure me, this most recent and unexpected shot across my bows sent me into an all-too-familiar state of uncertainty and paranoia.
My brain turned to fudge every time I gave a moment to the prospect of a split with the team. Could I ever go through with such a thing? How would I go about broaching the subject? Did all three of them need to go, or just one or two?
We had experienced so much together, the highs and lows, the laughter and tears, dirty beds and dirty bars. We had been an unofficial band of radio brothers and one sister. It seemed inconceivable that it could be about to end.
Uncertain and miserable, I resorted to another Evans disappearing act. Please understand I do not do this anymore, but back then it was my automatic default setting when things started to become sticky.
‘Babe, can we go away for a while?’ I asked Bill one early May afternoon.
‘Sure, where d’ya wanna go?’ she replied.
‘How about LA?’ I suggested.
‘Alriiight!’ she enthused. Bill adores LA.
Now, the thing was, I had asked Bill but I hadn’t told anyone else; not my agent, not The Breakfast Show team, nor my current employers. I also hadn’t informed anyone that Billie and I were going to get married whilst we were there. But that’s probably because neither Billie nor I planned that either.
TOP
10
THINGS THAT MAKE A WEDDING BRILLIANT
10 The readings
9 The walk-in/walk-out music
8 The best man
7 The weather
6 The party
5 The location
4 A round of applause/cheering/whistling and general exuberant mayhem when you are pronounced married
3 Only inviting people who you really want there and who really want to be there
2 The bridesmaids
1 The bride
FIRST-CLASS LONG-HAUL FLYING is one of life’s great pleasures. Basically, you sit in a huge airborne La-Z-Boy-type of affair, watching up-to-date motion-picture releases whilst extremely courteous ladies and gentlemen fetch anything you might desire. The most difficult thing about travelling at the posh end of the plane is therefore resisting total indulgence and grabbing some much-needed jetlag-busting sleep to help acclimatise yourself for when you land.
I remember climbing aboard a flight to LA once and spying the Who’s Roger Daltrey a few seats in front. I was amazed when, as soon as we had taken off, he requested a large bottle of water, a blanket and a sleeping mask. That was him out for the next thirteen hours. What a waste, I thought, not taking advantage of any of the delights on offer. That was until I arrived at my hotel and could barely recall my name, I was so tired. Nowadays I limit myself to one movie, a few drinks, one meal and then some shut-eye but I am still not equipped with the same amount of self-control I witnessed from Mr Daltrey on that occasion.
After landing in LA Billie and I checked into the Four Seasons Hotel on Doheny Drive. There was a thick fog hanging over the city, so the next morning we rented a Ford Mustang convertible and headed south to Palm Springs, in search of the sun.
Palm Springs is situated a couple of hours’ drive from central LA and started life as an Indian reservation. In the fifties and sixties it became an out-of-town resort in which Hollywood luminaries built their second homes, hence the scores of mouth-wateringly luxurious Art Deco hilltop houses that sell today for tens of millions of dollars each.
Kirk Douglas was early on the post-war scene, as was Sinatra and his good friend Bob Hope, who even became Mayor for a while – although these guys were just the second wave. The pre-war visits of Einstein, Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower sealed Palm Springs as a preferred location of the great and the good. If it was good enough for such an illustrious guest list, Bill and I concluded, it was good enough for us.
The first thing we saw as we drove into town was a visitor centre. Five minutes later, thanks to the perfectly cast, helpful lady behind the counter – everything’s like a movie in California if you want it to be – we were knocking on the door of a very mysterious hotel.
This hotel, which looked like it had been fashioned out of wobbly white concrete, had no sign displayed outside and gave no impression whatsoever of being anything other than a private residence.
At first we thought we might have the wrong address but the big wooden door was slightly ajar, daring us to go in.
‘You go first,’ I said to Bill.
‘No way – you,’ she whispered. We both started to crack up.
The door began to open, seemingly of its own accord, like we were in an episode of Scooby Doo.
‘Hi guys,’ purred a drop-dead gorgeous woman, probably somewhere in her early fifties who seemed to appear from nowhere. ‘How may I help you?’
‘Er, is this the hotel?’ I asked sheepishly.
‘Well, it’s a hotel,’ she smiled.
It turned out to be the coolest hotel either of us had ever stayed in. She ran it for a guy who set it up in the late sixties. With more than a hint of the sixties’ hippy vibe about him, he had been in the movie business but decided to quit and take his movie magic with him into the hotel trade. The Hollywood equivalent of a retired English lady setting up a tea shop in Devon. He really was a dude.
All the rooms were different shapes and funked up with rough, white stone walls, tiled floors strewn with funky rugs, dark wood furniture and wooden blinds. There were various areas in which to hang out, eat and relax, with communal dinners taking place in the evening followed by an invitation to sit on the grass to watch old movies being projected directly on to the painted garden wall.
The room we had been allocated was an artist’s studio.
‘This was Winston Churchill’s favourite,’ said the nice lady who had greeted us. ‘It’s where he came to paint whenever he was in town.’
The visitors’ book in reception provided evidence of the great man’s visits, as it did for those of Jack Nicholson, Humphrey Bogart and countless other Hollywood luminaries.
The more the magic of this oasis beguiled us the more we couldn’t help feeling we had been guided there by fate.
Following a fabulous Moroccan dinner on our second evening, served in earthenware bowls and washed down with several rum punches, I woke the next day to find that firstly, I had a thumping headache and secondly, Bill was nowhere to be seen.
This was a little strange as Bill was not the earliest of risers. I stared at the ceiling for a while like you do when you are hungover and then, with still no sign of her, I hauled my skinny white arse out of bed, threw on some clothes and wandered down to breakfast to see where she might be.
Bill was already sitting at a table, coffee on the go and a glass of fruit juice standing by.
‘Hi babe,’ I said. ‘Where have you been?’
‘To buy this,’ she replied, taking a notebook out of a flimsy carrier bag, along with some pens and a packet of coloured pencils.
‘Brilliant,’ I remarked, wondering what they were for. Billie couldn’t wait to enlighten me.
‘This is a book to make notes and draw pictures in whilst we plan our wedding.’
‘Alriiight!’ I whooped.
It had been decided, we were to get hitched in Las Vegas, only twenty minutes away by plane, with Billie overseeing the US side of arrangements.
‘Babe, we can rent our own jet for just two thousand bucks!’ I swung into action with a few phone calls back home.
The first was to Webbo, who said he would be wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted, although he was slightly taken by surprise to learn he needed to be in the middle of a desert in America in two days’ time.
Two other friends of ours, Chris and Zanna, were next to be invited and with our guest headcount now up to a church-busting three, it only remained for me to call my best friend Danny Baker, who immediately declared himself both best man and stand-in father of the bride.
The jet was booked – private planes in America ar
e inordinately cheaper than over here for some reason – and the future Mr and Mrs Evans checked into the ambassador suite at the Four Seasons. It was the plushest hotel I had ever seen but the suite was not a patch on the presidential suite to which, for some mysterious reason, we were upgraded less than an hour after we had arrived.
You know those hotel suites that you see in films about Vegas, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows through which you can see the whole city? Well, this was one of those. Not only that but the dining room consisted of a table for twenty people, there were two kitchens, a panic room and no fewer than five bedrooms. The view was one hundred and eighty degrees; sharing its panorama between downtown and the airport, it was almost as if we were hovering over the main runway.
After a whistle-stop outfit-buying trip to Banana Republic in Caesar’s Shopping Arcade – stripy shirt for me, cute little pink skirt and white shirt for Bill, we indulged in the most amazing wedding-eve feast.
We ate and ate and ate; eating too much in Vegas is very infectious. We were surrounded by lots of large Americans who obviously didn’t see anything wrong with not being able to fit both cheeks of their ever-expanding behinds in the same state. Bill and I, both in pretty good shape at the time, therefore felt like we had plenty of calories to spare, with their lard versus our lean only serving to convince us there was no need to hold back.
The next morning we awoke a good half-stone heavier but, hey, that just meant there was more of each other for us to marry. After a carb-tastic room service, it was time to see if our recently purchased new togs still fitted. They did, just about, but there was definitely more resistance than there had been in the shop the day before.
With now only a couple of hours to go until we became Mr and Mrs, the future Mrs E and I decided we needed some beer to soak up the food babies to which we were now threatening to give birth.
Poolside is the only place to drink a light beer during the day in Vegas, preferably lying on a sun lounger being periodically sprayed with a water mister by a dutiful and uncomplaining ‘comfort attendant’.
Two happier and more contented souls you could not have found that day as Bill and I lay there without a care in the world, sipping freezing cold beverages out of those tumblers that have a layer of ice between the plastic to keep the liquid inside as cool as possible.
‘We’re getting married this afternoon,’ we kept saying to each other, Bill in her bikini looking fabulous, me, in a long-sleeved shirt, chinos and floppy hat, sweating buckets.
Several chilled beers later our guests arrived, coming round the corner suited and booted straight off the plane and ready for their role in this adventure.
It was time for the party to start.
The register office in Las Vegas has to be the busiest in the world. When we turned up to register, the day before, a lot of those queuing were picking up their licences en route to wherever it was they had chosen to tie the knot, already dressed for the occasion. There was fancy dress, traditional top hat and tails, plus a few less predictable themes – half-naked gay cowboys, plus two hospital patients in their gowns with their drips still attached.
The queues, or lines, as they refer to them in the States, have to have been the happiest I’ve ever stood in. Almost everyone was beaming from ear to ear and for those not so sure, there was no need to worry, as divorces are just as quick to come by as most things in Las Vegas.
We’d been offered several marriage ‘packages’ but plumped for one of the simplest. Our actual wedding only cost us $179. The whole thing, however, was a little more than that on top. There were the four return flights to England, the private plane there and back to Palm Springs, the obligatory stretch limo – white with flashing lights inside and out, and champagne on ice (how could we not?) – plus the hotel and the seven-course banquet Bill had planned with the chef.
The ceremony was perfectly kitsch. Bill’s first task was to go to the fridge and select her flowers; the higher the shelf, the more expensive the bouquet. Our ‘priest’ was one of those holy men who you can’t help feeling is not really that holy; too much gold on his fingers and too much dandruff on his lapels. I couldn’t help thinking that here was a man with the kind of secrets we might want to know.
We also had an inkling that he might well be enjoying an additional revenue stream, after several paparazzi photographers ambushed us just before proceedings were due to get underway. This suspicion was exacerbated by the fact that he wouldn’t allow us to close the outside doors during the ceremony. He actually started frothing at the mouth at one point as we had a tug-o-door moment. No, this was definitely not a man of any God I had ever heard of.
Once the ceremony was over we piled into the limo and hit the strip, sunroof open, music full whack and fizz all round. After cruising round town, we had to get as close to the airfield as we could before our pals cottoned on to what was going on.
Driving straight through the gates and onto the runway, the driver delivered big-time.
‘Aye, aye, what’s going on ‘ere then?’ joked Danny, as we pulled up to the small but perfectly formed Citation executive jet waiting for us where we’d left it less than 24 hours before.
Following several enthusiastically appreciative comments, including the odd ‘Fuck me’ and ‘You are having a laugh,’ we piled on board, taxied towards the main runway and, in no time at all, were catapulting skywards to continue this most joyous day of festivities. Bill and I were beside ourselves. We took turns screaming, ‘This is happening NOW!’
When we arrived back at the magic hotel in the middle of the Springs, twilight was on hand to help paint the perfect picture.
The hotel staff had laid on a candlelit spread to die for – an old wooden teak table by the side pool almost completely covered in the plentiful offerings that adorned it. There were brightly coloured bowls of freshly baked breads, rows of perfectly cooked fresh tuna steaks, plates dripping with strips of wagyu beef, bottles of wine and champagne, and a bucket of beers – anything and everything that we could possibly want, and far too much of it for just the six of us.
I don’t think I have ever been as full as I was at the end of our wedding dinner but still, I remember doing that thing of sneaking some of the food under the table because I was so guilty about not eating enough.
The whole day was perfect, except for the business of – well, you can imagine. There was no way anything remotely energetic was going to happen in the bedroom after all that lot. How many people really do have sex on the night of their wedding anyhow?
Please tell me it’s not that many.
The next day, with lots of yawning after the night before, our loyal wedding party was dispatched safely and semi-soberly back to London, leaving Bill and me alone to enjoy each other a bit more. But the clock was ticking and we couldn’t stay away for ever.
My original week off had now already strayed into an unofficial second week. There were rumblings of discontent from my employers coming via messages from my agent. It was looking to them very much as if they were losing control of the former owner of the radio station for which they had paid over £200 million.
As far as I could see they needed to lighten up and go with the flow. I was their biggest billboard and generating a lot of press attention that could have been harnessed to promote our brand.
In my mind Bill and I getting married was a wonderfully positive story. Why didn’t they get it? Perhaps it was because they didn’t want to. Perhaps it was because they were dealing in black and white, whilst I dealt exclusively in colour. That was how I had always been and I couldn’t change now, even if they wanted me to.
TOP
10
REALLY BAD CAREER MOVES THAT I HAVE EXPERIENCED
10 Making cat jokes
9 Wiping over really important interviews that haven’t yet been aired
8 Setting fire to your radio station’s outside-broadcast facility
7 Turning up for your first job as a BBC producer not wearing a tie
>
6 Declining to accept the highest award your industry has to offer (a gold Sony Radio Award in 1997 – because I refused to be abused as a pawn in a self-serving display of unashamed corporate promotion. A little too dramatically activist perhaps, as I have accepted several since and now actually host the awards each year. So much for my core beliefs, eh?)
5 Walking away from national breakfast shows for no good reason
4 Taking your ex-employers to court with a case no judge in their right mind would ever take seriously
3 Paying millions of pounds for the pleasure
2 Doing things for money alone when you no longer need it
1 Staying out when you know you should be home tucked up in bed
BILL AND I RETURNED BACK TO ENGLAND ready to write the next chapters in our new life together but the storm clouds were gathering apace over Golden Square, the home of Virgin Radio.
My first day back on the air was greeted with a distinct lack of enthusiasm around the building, not made any easier by the fact that I had begun the process of disbanding the team. I had already talked to John whilst I was away in the US, after which he had reluctantly – understandably so – agreed to leave the show, and I had sent word to Dan and Holly that we needed a serious chat. I had decided it was probably best if they didn’t come in until after the show, when we would have a frank discussion about our future.
That was the first morning since I had begun appearing on national radio that I didn’t have at least one of my old pals around me. With no explanation to the listeners, largely because I didn’t know what to say, this must have sounded extraordinary but it was only the start of me burying my head in the sand when it came to facing the music, as far as my career was concerned.
With tears from Holly and mixed emotions from Dan following our meetings, they too were about to be cast aside. These ‘chats’ were highly uncomfortable affairs as the general theme was ‘It’s been a great ride, but now it’s time to go off and do your own thing.’ It was a predictably horrible experience for all concerned but I had resolved to remain steadfast and firm, and orchestrate a clean break.