Chris Moyles: Not Exactly Gospel

Hate him or rate him, radio has never been the same since the day Mr. Chris Moyles first donned a pair of headphones. Probably the biggest phenomenon to hit the airwaves in the late nineties, Chris has sat behind the microphone for the last ten years, the self-proclaimed and undisputed ‘Saviour of Radio 1’. This is the story of the chubby teenager obsessed with the crazy dream of becoming a famous DJ. This is the story of how a good Catholic boy got to bring along his mother to meet Ant and Dec. This is the story of a man and his mouth. Welcome to The Gospel According to Chris Moyles.

Appropriately enough for the start of a ‘gospel’ there are plenty of parallels between the Nativity and Chris’s entry into the world. He was born into a humble, hardworking and religious family. There was no privilege for him growing up. Holiday trips to his mother’s native Ireland meant cramming his family into an aunt’s or uncle’s place. His mother was also responsible for raising the young Chris as a Roman Catholic. Chris attended religious schools throughout his education and was even educated by nuns at primary school, one of whom he refers to affectionately as ‘little miss nun.’ This makes sense of his consistent use of Christian language and even the ‘blessing’ which closes the book.

At twelve, Chris was already a radio nut – a self-confessed airwaves addict. By sheer pester power and determination, he managed to get a voluntary job at a hospital radio station in Wakefield, close to his home in Leeds. Cutting his teeth at this early stage allowed the teenage Chris to get the basics under his belt before leaving school. Remarkably for someone so young, Moyles had found his vocation for life. And so it came to pass that even before the ink was dry on his GCSE papers, he already had paid work lined up as a DJ at ‘Topshop Radio’.

If that sounds ambitious, that was only the beginning. What follows is a detailed blow by blow account of Chris’s career. No successes go untrumpeted, but equally no failures are glossed over. Passing through work for a string of stations, usually getting into trouble due to his controversial style, getting fired twice, picking himself up each time and starting again. Moyles has an indefatigable spirit. It’s all there: the unbelievable board room encounters, the cat and mouse pay negotiations, the betrayals and the big breaks. The climax is his arrival at the Radio 1 studios where he ascended to his throne, the pinnacle of national radio broadcasting: the Breakfast Show.

Through it all, Chris is remarkably matter of fact and, to be frank, remarkably defamatory of several of his former bosses and colleagues. To most, though, he offers thanks, recognising that whatever his skills, he’s had many people fighting his corner throughout his career. This is classic Moyles style and will be familiar to anyone who has tuned in to his show. Chris’s life becomes the show, which is often carried by his anecdotes, feuds with other DJs, or pet hates. Somehow, Chris’s cheeky chappy image allows him to get away with it, although clearly he hasn’t had it all his own way.

One of the striking features of the book, and of Moyles in general, is that it is full of knowing contradictions. Chris is well aware of the exceptional nature of his rise to fame, and revels in his ordinary working class background as much as in any of the celebrity encounters he has since enjoyed. Images of cringe-worthy birthday snaps featuring three year old Chris in brown and pink dungarees sit alongside a photo of the sharp-dressing Moyles hobnobbing with the Queen. The whole book presents an unlikely fulfilment of the dream of an oddly talented, oddly shaped, oddly dressed boy.

Was his success the product of talent, determination, help of friends or blind fortune? Moyles immodestly leans toward the first two, but comes across as genuinely grateful to those that helped him out over the years. Oddly, luck doesn’t get a mention. There’s no mention of ‘being in the right place at the right time’, for example. Self-belief permeates all of Chris’ writing and broadcasting, and this may be the most important ingredient in his rise.

Career focus plays an important role in Chris’ life. He repeatedly describes his attitude to his career as business-like and professional. Listening to his show, one could be forgiven for doubting this. He is hardly cast in the mould of the respectable gentleman DJ, frequently talking about little else than himself. When he’s not sounding off against high-profile colleagues or celebrities, he has, in my view, come over as childish, indulgent or just plain arrogant. No wonder, then, that he needs to emphasise his professionalism repeatedly to radio executives. With them he goes straight to the bottom line of the ratings. This is another knowing contradiction then: deliberately ‘childish professionalism.’ Moyles is no fool and his success is no coincidence. Perhaps Moyles is a lot smarter than he projects, and is playing just dumb enough to gain the sympathy of the listeners?

There is, however, no cynicism detectable in Moyles’s approach to his work. Self-interest certainly features strongly, but no cutting ruthlessness. Alongside the career focus is a strong family focus, a sense of pride and closeness that fame appears not to have affected. 2004, the year of his ascent to the Breakfast Show on Radio 1, which he describes as ‘the greatest year of my career’, is also described as ‘the most worrying year in my personal and family life’. Both his parents were seriously ill and needed operations, dad with heart trouble and mum with breast cancer. Chris is uninhibited about his family:

I live for my family and I’m not ashamed or embarrassed to say it. I love my parents and my brother so much that I honestly don’t know what I’d do without them. I longed for this awful period to be over so that we could all sit down with a sign of relief, knowing that all four of us were fine.

Plenty of critics have panned Chris over the years for his superficiality, his sexism toward women and his outspoken and often thoughtless humiliation of anyone who has crossed him. If he wasn’t an extremely sophisticated comedian, he would be staring law suit after law suit in the face. For example, take his description on air of one of the members of the band Girls Aloud as ‘The ropey looking ginger one at the back.’ Unsurprisingly this observation did not go down well with the guest in question, which Chris justifies as follows:

‘I’m not a bad person. I genuinely don’t want to upset anybody. Well there are a few I wouldn’t mind upsetting. But generally speaking I don’t. Look most of my audience know that I’m a nice guy . . . so sometimes I say things for a cheap laugh. You know, the kind of comments you make down the pub . . . with your mates. It’s a joke. They’re just words.’

It is telling that ‘the audience’ are seen as the arbiters of what is acceptable broadcasting, rather than a recognition of the BBC’s charter for public service. Although I find Moyles amusing on most occasions, he sometimes crosses the line as far as I’m concerned. The point is that he isn’t down the pub, he’s broadcasting to the nation. While he is running down himself, or the team that make his show, he is on safe ground, yet he rarely confines himself to these subjects. In many ways Chris’s reputation rests on controversy and continually pushing the boundaries. In this respect, Chris comes across like some of the rather self-amused pupils I’ve taught over the past few years – driven by reputation and the presence of an audience into increasingly inappropriate behaviour.

His use of language in the book is still less inhibited than his broadcasting and would no doubt have shocked ‘little miss nun.’ It mirrors the frequency of expletives one might overhear in a drunken Friday night conversation between any two blokes down the local boozer. Why it is necessary to write in far cruder terms than those he uses on air escapes me. Clearly he is talented enough to be amusing without swearing, so why bother with it at all?

Chris’s act revolves around the world as he sees it. His radio show is indeed ‘The Gospel according to Chris Moyles’: it is the unvarnished, incontrovertible and honest truth, at least as far as a self-confessed ‘overweight, beer-drinking, cigarette smoking, lazy [man]’ understands it. In my view Chris’s attempts at telling it like it is are generally fairly accurate and amusing and that makes him the talent that he is.

So how does ‘the Saviour of Radio 1’ compare to the original? Both found a vocation early in life which seemed ridiculous to family and friends at first. Both devoted their lives to telling the story of their own lives to as many as they could. They were unashamed of where they were coming from and had a pretty good idea of where they were headed. Both used life in all its richness to share stories which amused and challenged their audiences by ‘telling it how it is’.

Yet whereas Chris declares ‘I’m not a bad person’, Christ refused to accept praise for being a good person. Christ told it how it was, but he also shared how it could be. To the jokes and irony he shared concerning the evils of his day, Christ added hope. He not only modelled what a good life was; through his death and resurrection he made it possible that his followers could live in the fullness of that good life – a life lived not to achieve personal glory, but glory for God: ‘the mystery is that Christ lives in you, and he is your hope of sharing in God’s glory’ (Colossians 1:27 CEV)

I believe that we live with a deep sense of irony within society thanks to Chris Moyles and others who articulate this better than most. However, Christ alone offers not only diagnosis, but also the cure.

Author: Roland Sokolowski