[fish heads]

Quite interesting interview with Chris in the Yorkshire post on Monday to compliment his trip to Leeds this week. Thought I'd post it in case anyone is interested.

I'm on the radio for three hours every day. I don't need to fall out of a night club with a Page Three girl for people to remember who I am'

As a teenager, he spent his Saturdays presenting Top Shop radio; now he's one of the most influential figures in broadcasting. Sarah Freeman meets Chris Moyles.

When Chris Moyles announces, as he regularly does, he is the saviour of Radio One, his tongue is firmly in his cheek.
But with figures released on Friday showing the station and in particular the presenter's breakfast show has finally captured listeners on the notoriously competitive London airwaves, he may yet live up to the title.
Variously described as loud-mouthed and brash, his presenting style has never been low key and his current show is not exactly a gentle introduction to the morning. But when his industry colleagues recently voted him among the most influential people in radio – behind Jonathan Ross and Terry Wogan, but ahead of Jeremy Vine and Jenni Murray, it was further confirmation his formula was a winning one, something his millions of listeners had known for some time.

"It's never been about ratings or awards," says the Leeds-born presenter at the end of another week of shows. "Radio One doesn't make any money so as long as you're not losing listeners hand over fist, you're normally OK, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't care.

"Traditionally, Radio One hasn't done well in London, just because there are so many commercial stations vying for a share of the audience, so for the breakfast show to come out on top, it is a big deal."

While Chris has perfected his radio persona of the larger than life, football loving lad's lad, his success has been hard earned.

I was in the same year as Chris at Mount St Mary's in Leeds and while the rest of us were trying to work out who should go to the off licence for a bottle of Lambrusco, he was spending his weekends on Radio Top Shop before moving on to Radio Aire and heading to Radio Luxembourg aged just 18.

When the station closed, Chris returned to England to be sacked from both Signal FM in Stoke and Chiltern Radio, but shortly after, Capital FM spotted his potential.

Although it might appear seamless now, there was no grand plan, he says, and his move to Radio One in 1997 couldn't have been less premeditated.
"My only aim had been to get to London," says Chris, who this morning will present his show from Leeds city centre. "When I got the job at Captial I honestly thought, 'That's it, I'll be here for the next 10 years.'

"After a year, Radio One offered me the job. It was a great position to be in, but I didn't think I was ready to do five shows a week. But when Capital didn't fight to save me, I left. It was the best decision I ever made, but at the time it was out of spite rather than anything else."

Initially presenting the afternoon show, Chris moved to the breakfast show, generally acknowledged to be the station's flagship slot, in January last year.

He is now the identifiable face of mornings on Radio One, but insists it's very much a team effort and admits he hasn't thought of a
future without co-presenter

Comedy Dave, who was "pushing buttons for Mark and Lard" when he first arrived at the station and producers Rachel and Aled, "who always pops up like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn".

Chris admits he doesn't do much planning for the show, but its success is in part due to its easy informality.

With that success comes perks – two weeks ago he sat in on an intimate Robbie Williams concert and this week there's a private screening of the new Harry Potter film – and he admits he has yet to tire of meeting the great and good.

"I love meeting famous people," he says. "I'm slightly obsessed; I even spot people who have appeared in toothpaste commercials."
But for all his attempts to convince, there is a sense he's not entirely comfortable with the world of celebrity.

He lives, he says, a relatively quiet life, with girlfriend Sophie, whom he met while filming Top of the Pops some years ago, his brother has a flat nearby and he's more likely to be spotted in his local pub than at a red carpet event.

"I'm very lucky," he says, lighting yet another Marlboro Light. "There's no pressure on me to do the celebrity circus. I'm on the radio for three hours every morning, so I don't need to fall out of China Whites with a Page Three girl for people to remember who I am.

"I get papped quite a lot. In the early days I was in Heat magazine every week, but these days none of the photos ever make it into the paper. Whenever a flash goes off now, I want to tell them they are wasting their time, no one's going to retire selling pictures of me."

Part of the reason his tabloid credentials have gone down as his career has taken off may be in part his decision to turn down the opportunity to take part in the likes of Celebrity Big Brother.

"I was asked and if I'm honest I would love to do it," he says. "But there are a lot of crap reasons why I won't.

"The thing is the people who do take part are seen as being on the way down and if you say yes, it's almost like admitting you need a career boost. Then there's things like Shooting Stars. I said no to that, because I liked the show so much I didn't want to ruin it for myself and I was going to go on Have I Got News for You until my friends told me I'd be mad to.
"I don't do a lot outside radio, I suppose I should do more."

His reticence to juggle a radio and TV career may well be justified. In 2002,he agreed to front Live With Chris Moyles on Channel Five. The show was the brainchild of Chris Evans, but when the viewing figures failed to live up to expectations he was axed while on holiday.

"We were under no illusions," he says. "Even before we had done the first programme, we were calling it a poor man's TFI Friday.

"I always thought it would take time to establish, but suddenly the ratings plummeted and never got better.

"Channel Five sent out a press release saying Christian O'Connell was taking over and I was pursuing other projects. The reason they gave was because I also had a radio show there wasn't time to rehearse, but then they replaced me with another DJ. It just didn't make sense."

While he may have been burnt by his foray into TV, the radio show is a refuge and even the constant early starts can't dampen his enthusiasm.

"Anyone who tells you getting up at 5.15am every day is fine, is lying," he says. "Now with the clocks having gone back when I get up it's pitch black and it's still pitch black when I get into work.

"You can never predict what's going to happen. Of course, there will be a cut off point, but hopefully there will be a natural progression onto something else. It may sound twee, but as long as the audience is happy, then I'm happy."

For the foreseeable future it seems, the position of saviour of Radio One is taken.

Not too much I didn't know before - although the fact he was offered a guest spot on HIGNFY was interesting. I didn't think he'd be the sort of person to be invited on to it, but he was right in turning it down IMO

[Quincy]

no offence but he would be made to look a bit thick on have i got news for you i feel.

[David]

When the clocks go back is it not lighter in the mornings....?

[Hez]

Not at that time of the morning,it gets light about 6-6.30ish

[David]

Aye, but, he said ""Now with the clocks having gone back when I get up it's pitch black and it's still pitch black when I get into work." Surely the clocks going back didnt cause this? If anything it would make it slightly lighter...?

[Gaspode_The_Wonder_Dog]

yeah its lighter for everybody else but still not for him...

[Uglybob]

cant have been more thicker than richard blackwood though

[Sidders]

It's dark 24 hours a day in Shetland anyway David, so why do you care?

[MC]

http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardi ... 66,00.html

Another Radio 1 based article. Dunno if people really care but here it is anyway:

Top Of The Pops

Two years ago, Radio 1 controller Andy Parfitt had a hi-tech vision to lead the station out of the doldrums. Julia Day asks him how he won back the teen audience, and what more he wants to achieve at the BBC

Monday October 31, 2005
The Guardian

Two years ago, John Peel was spinning cutting-edge tunes from his farmhouse, Sara Cox was loud-mouthing her way through the ultimate ladette's breakfast show and Mark and Lard were still an institution on BBC Radio 1. How times change. Then, station controller Andy Parfitt said he was not worried about losing his job, despite the fact that Radio 1 had hit an all-time ratings and credibility low as the nation's youth found their teenage kicks elsewhere.

Parfitt was not worried, he said, because he had a plan, a two-year vision for the station, backed by the BBC board. At the time, the idea of Radio 1 rediscovering its cool seemed unconvincing, to say the least. Two years on and a return visit to Radio 1's bustling HQ finds Parfitt presiding over a station rejuvenated by an overhauled roster of daytime and evening DJs and shows, feted with critical acclaim and resonating with young Brits whose patronage has pushed audiences emphatically back above the crucial 10 million mark. Last week's ratings figures reveal the station's best audience share for more than four years, at 9.4%, and that an extra 260,000 listeners have tuned into Radio 1 over the past year.

Parfitt's controversial decision to hand the flagship breakfast show to motormouth DJ Chris Moyles has paid off handsomely, with Moyles recording his best-ever breakfast audience, up 360,000 over the past year to 6.5 million.

At this point Parfitt would be well within his rights to take aim at his critics and say "I told you so", but the closest he gets is "there was a determined strategy and we've bone-headedly seen it through". Besides, he is much too polite for point-scoring and much too busy; he has hatched another plan for Radio 1's next phase. And all bets are off.

The future of Radio 1, if Parfitt is to be believed, lies in a range of activities that will take the station far away from what is traditionally considered radio. The first podcast of Chris Moyles's breakfast show in August rocketed to the top of Apple iTunes' podcast chart within 10 hours of it becoming available. It is "a symbol of what Radio 1 has to do in the next few years", says Parfitt.

"The market has changed. Just three years ago, if you'd have asked listeners what an iPod was you wouldn't be sure of an answer. Now everybody has got one, knows someone who's got one or has got a cameraphone or broadband. It is a transfer from the idea of the radio market in to a digital media market," says Parfitt, naming widespread broadband access as the pivotal "tipping point".

"Our listeners expect their favourite brand to be multiplatform. The divisions between what's audio, visual, a game or mobile have got very porous and if [listeners] hear Chris [Moyles] talking about something, they want to see it," he explains. "Phase one was the reposition and phase two has got to be the development of Radio 1 in to an audiovisual offering." 'A teenager's world'

Work on morphing the radio station in to a multimedia affair that allows listeners to become participants and shows to live beyond their radio timeslot has already begun. Initiatives in recent weeks include a competition encouraging people to download previously unreleased BBC archive footage and use it to create their own three-minute VJ (video jockey) mixes, and a webcast of a Kanye West gig.

The website for the recent John Peel commemoration allows users to listen to Peel Day gigs, upload pictures from the concerts they attended, view video highlights, search Peel Sessions tracklistings and download mobile phone wallpaper, among other things.

Parfitt is adamant that radio will remain "the train that's pulling the trucks" as the "centrepiece" for the new strategy. "If Radio 1 is not healthy and if it's not populated by great talent that can really do radio then we're not going to succeed," he says. But broadband, digital TV and MP3 players are a teenager's world, and Radio 1 "needs to be in that space too in order to futureproof us so that we can carry on doing the job we do in terms of music".

When Radio 1 recently filmed a Franz Ferdinand gig at the Scala in London, it was online the next day. He would have liked to make a podcast of the show so that fans could download the gig and take it with them, but the sticky issue of how artists charge and collect payment for music downloaded to podcasts has yet to be resolved, although Parfitt is adamant it must be, and soon.

"We're absolutely sensitive to the people who invest a lot of money in the music. All of this technology in the end is absolutely great for music because of the volume of music downloaded and interest in music being re-energised. The key is for it to be portable."

Parfitt believes the way forward may be to offer portable music on demand that would time-out after seven days, covering a week-long "public service" window. Right now, in the dead of the night, Radio 1 is testing ideas on its late-night audience, such as My Tunes, a virtual version of the traditional mix tape, and the 10-hour takeover whereby listeners programme the station's output by texting requests that are sorted by new whizz-bang technology. And Parfitt is keen that Radio 1 be the first to host a "virtual Big Weekend" festival in the same vein as a virtual gig staged by Damon Albarn's animated band Gorillaz.

A key role in continuing its renaissance will be that of George Ergatoudis, who last week was handed one of the most influential jobs in the music business, Radio 1's head of music. He championed acts including Dizzee Rascal and Kano at its digital sister station 1xtra.

Radio 1's commercial rivals were furiously trying to demonstrate the station had strayed far from its public service remit and deep into their territory two years ago, so they may not be best pleased by Parfitt's "phase two". He bats away any suggestion that he is leading Radio 1 off the path of public service, saying the station "demonstrated conclusively under charter review how distinctive it is," and arguing that his new initiatives only make Radio 1 more distinct and "deepen" its relationship with the audience. "You can interact with [Radio 1] now, you can see it at work. You can see inside Radio 1," which, according to his research, is delivering what listeners want.

"It appears to me that the public service remit of Radio 1 is amplified and real when I go to a gig and see new young bands ... I believe that young people should get quality from the licence fee as much as other audiences. That is why Radio 1 resonates with me."

In recent months Parfitt has been working on a cross-BBC project on children and teens, trying to work out what the BBC might offer young people over the next five years. The work seems to have opened up possibilities for Parfitt outside Radio 1.

Two years ago, he was unruffled at the suggestion that his job was on the line if his masterplan failed, and he confidently pledged total commitment to the station. Now at 47, and after seven years as controller, he is less adamant that his future lies at the station. "[Two years ago] I said absolutely 'no, I love being the controller of Radio 1 and I've got no plans' and I feel similarly passionate about seeing the new strategy through and making sure Radio 1 is fit for the digital age. But [now] I'm not so dogmatic about it," he admits.

He believes it is entirely possible that a 50-year-old could run the station - because "physical age is not the issue" - but I get the distinct idea that it will not be run by a 50-year-old Parfitt.

During a passionate tribute to BBC values, and radio in particular, I discern more than a hint of Parfitt setting out his stall for prospective job opportunities at the corporation, but he is careful not to appear too eager. Rather, he seems pleased at having successfully having wrought a new station from his vision, glad to be setting out the next stage of his strategy but open-minded, now, about whether its execution will be handed to a successor.

"Of course, I would very much like to do another job at the BBC of importance. If the right opportunity arose and people thought I was the right person, then we'll see. There is lots more work to do at Radio 1, I've got no time on my hands."

Curriculum Vitae
Age 47
Education Ashton Park Comprehensive, Bristol, Bristol Old Vic Theatre school
Career
1978/79 Asst stage manager, Bristol Arts Centre
1979 Trainee studio manager, then studio manager/sound engineer
1984 Broadcaster/station manager British Forces Broadcasting, Falklands
1985 Producer, BBC Education
1987/8 Producer, Radio 4
1989 Asst network editor BBC Radio 5
1993 Chief asst to controller of Radio 1
Promoted to editor, commissioning & planning, then managing editor
1997 Radio 1 deputy controller
1998 Controller, Radio 1
2002 Additionally controller, 1Xtra
2005 Chair BBC Creative Futures group for Children & Teens