Call the Midlife (40 page)

Danny’s wonderful and long-suffering wife Wendy, along with their ever-smiling daughter Bonnie, both did exactly that, and we all had a whale of a time. Especially Bonnie, who I’ve known most of her life. She is a delight to be around and has been a Take That fan since the very beginning, twenty-five years ago next year. In fact, when they originally split up back in 1996 she took a week off school in protest. Maths and English can wait, real life will come soon enough. A kid grieving for their first pin-ups is a heartbreaking business.

She also wrote a letter to each one of them every day until admitting defeat and reluctantly returning to her studies.

Almost as soon as Wendy put the key in the door upon our return, Danny was waiting in the hallway with that big beaming cartoon grin of his, wielding one of his signature bottles of ice-cold white wine.

‘Wa-hey, let’s hear it for The Thatters, the Thatters That Matter, three cheers for you four – hurrah!’

Yet another bizarre twist of fate.

Having spent countless days over at the Bakers’ in the Nineties, I hadn’t been over to theirs at all for a couple of years and suddenly here we were again, the day after I’d been working with Danny all week.

All meant to be. All written in the stars.

But back at Mum’s.

Still no word from Channel 4 about a series, or Michael my agent re: how the
Top Gear
deal is progressing. I decide to email him. He replies that the
TG
deal is ongoing and has been all weekend as all sides want to announce sooner rather than later, before it leaks out. Which it will; things like this always do. He further informs me that he has heard from Jay at Channel 4, who spookily said that she would like to pick up the option for a
TFI Friday
series forthwith but pending ‘what might be happening with Chris and
Top Gear
’.

‘Do you think she knows?’ Michael asks a minute later when I call him.

‘How could she? At least not yet anyway.’

‘I don’t think she can either. Maybe it’s just the obvious question to ask at the moment where you’re concerned.’

We decide it’ll be best if I call Jay. Straight is the only way to be.

‘All right,’ she began calmly down the line, while apparently huddled outdoors under a blanket somewhere near Manchester. She was thre to watch one of her best pals,
BBC Breakfast
’s Louise Minchin, compete in a triathlon as part of her quest to represent Team GB at the Rio Olympics.

‘Let me put it like this: if you were a betting man, would you say you are more, or less, likely to be doing
Top Gear
next year? Just so I have some idea of what I’m dealing with here.’

It was as covert as we were going to manage.

‘I would say more.’

‘OK, well – not ideal, to be honest, but as long as the two don’t run concurrently and there’s at least a couple of months’ separation
I would still say yes, we’d like to do an initial series of eight more
TFI Friday
s this side of 2015. I’m talking about a run up to Christmas after the Rugby World Cup at the end of October/beginning of November.’

All good and fair enough, but as it’s cards-on-the-table time I have to ask her about something that’s been preying on my mind since the crazy ratings had come through. After catch-up and repeat figures were rolled into the original 3.8 million viewers, we were now talking about an overall viewer rating of well over 5 million – on the way to 6 million, even. This was verging on ridiculous. Far beyond any of our wildest predictions and aspirations.

‘May I ask you, Jay, if – since the figures are stratospherically higher than any of us ever expected – if it has crossed your mind to offer me a substantially bigger contract?’

‘No, not at all. If you weren’t such a high-profile BBC face, then yes, I probably would, but you are and so I’m not going to do that, that’s not how I run the channel.’

So that was that then.

A straight answer to a straight question.

All very un-showbiz. Ha!

Not that I fully understand her logic. Actually I don’t understand it at all. When we originally did
TFI Friday
I was hosting the Radio 1
Breakfast Show
and much more high profile than I am now. A dual radio and TV career for me have always been separate entities that can coexist on different networks via the same persona, especially if both programmes feed off similar material. But no matter, Channel 4 is Jay’s channel, she’s the controller and it’s up to her what calls she makes.

All right then, so a miniseries of
TFI
it is. More bonus for a few Friday nights at the tail end of this year. What’s not to like about the prospect of that?

Time to refocus.

Time to get the
Top Gear
deal done, signed and announced.

Monday, 15 June

I’m called in straight after my radio show goes off the air to BBC New Broadcasting House to meet Kim Shillinglaw, the Controller of BBC2, Adam Waddell who runs
Top Gear
BBC Worldwide, and Mark Linsey. They need to see the whites of my eyes just to make sure once and for all I’m the man for the job and I mean business.

By the end of the meeting it’s pretty obvious I have never been more serious about anything in my life. My initial overview is simple. There are two ways of looking at the situation
Top Gear
is in now:

Of course, I’m looking at it from the point of view of scenario B. And I absolutely bloody believe it. In my opinion
Top Gear
right now is like the old League Division One before it became the Premiership and very quickly became a stellar multibillion-pound franchise. Yes, Jeremy and Wilman had dragged a dreary old motoring show kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century and brought it to life like never before. Only a fool would argue otherwise, with it now achieving a global audience in the hundreds of millions. But somewhere along the line its evolution had come to a grinding halt.

Where most other people could only see paralysis by analysis and comparison for whoever ‘dared’ take over next, I could see only potential for the show to be even bigger thanit ever has been.

For a start, where is Top Gear World, the theme park? People would come from the four corners of the planet to stay there for a few days, even if it were located in grey old England. We live three miles from Legoland, and it’s packed all year round. I mean, Legoland is OK but it’s no Universal Studios. And of course
Top Gear
the television show would be filmed at Top Gear World, and were
it to exist, fans could visit on show day and win tickets to be in the audience.

Then there is
Top Gear
’s current format and content, as was. How come the show had basically morphed into little more than three films and four links, with only the celeb interview and the news to break up the running order?

And the big one for me:

Why hasn’t it ever been live?

Imagine that: ‘And now, ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, it’s eight o’clock and live on BBC2 – it’s time for
Top Gear
.’

That would give it the kick up the backside for sure. The great thing about a live television show is that it only takes as long to do as it lasts. Sure, you lose the ability to edit and put in ‘the funny’, but you gain so much more. The script has to be tighter because it simply can’t afford to spread as much and everyone has to recalibrate their focus as a result.

As for what it does for the show itself, there’s no way the viewers can be sure of what’s going to happen, because it’s obvious no one is sure. What will be will be on live TV.

It’s impossible to second-guess something that’s yet to take place. That’s the joy of it all.

The other key to sustainable and acceptable edginess is in the writing of each sequence. Take the Farrelly brothers, who have written some of the most popular movies of the modern era. They openly concede to deliberately writing themselves into a corner, so they then have to spend hours, days or even weeks getting themselves out of it again. The genius of this approach being that if it takes them a week to figure out a thirty-second twist, what chance does the audience have of doing the same in just thirty seconds?

The twist on the twist – love it.

I’ve come to today’s meeting with a list as long as my arm of issues I think we need to and can overcome, the emphasis at all times being on evolution, not revolution. After our scheduled meeting time of one hour and fifteen minutes, the meeting comes
to a close and the message goes out to close the deal so we can all sign as soon as possible.

This will be a game changer for all concerned and we need heads of agreement printed, checked by legals and signed by 5 p.m. this afternoon so we can announce 7.15 p.m., two and a bit hours later. Again, avoiding any leaks is key, we must try to keep control of the story. If it starts tidy and unanimous, it has the best chance of staying that way.

Now, let me tell you, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DO A DEAL OF SUCH MAGNITUDE within a week, let alone six hours.

As proved to be the case here, despite everyone pulling out all the stops to get the deal over the line. The Monday 5 p.m. deadline came and went, with contract negotiations and writes and rewrites continuing through the night and into Tuesday. But it was one of those rare processes where we were all moving forward as one, no one side trying to trip up the other to gain an advantage. Few deals in my business take place amid such unified bonhomie.

There was no doubt this was going to happen – the moment we could announce, we would.

Patience Christopher, patience.

Tuesday, 16 June

Today is the day. It has to be. Usual routine for me: jog to work, drink as much water as I can bear, grab papers and coffee, read overnight brief from my producer Paul, go to loo, start show and see what happens.

My daily radio show is like a working screenplay that begins at 6.30 every morning: we take our time at the beginning to grow things we can harvest later on. It’s all about priming little grenades of content that we can explode as the show unfolds.

A few years ago I learnt not to panic in the first hour of the show. If things are quiet, relax, play a few more records. The key is to
let the narrative come to you instead of chasing it. And it always works. It’s been a complete revelation.

Something will always happen sooner or later, it’s how the universe works; the only thing we can get wrong is to get in the way or presume we can out-world our world. Of which there’s no chance, no chance at all. Of course we’ve all tried to do it, but life has taught me that, barring childbirth, a broken down car or a troublesome door, it’s usually for better to wait than push. Other than on these rare occasions, nine times out of ten, if you do push in the first place you’ll end up having to push back at some point in the future. More often than not a lot further back from where you originally started.

After the show finishes I have to attend the screening of the new Jake Gyllenhaal film,
Southpaw
, which, as well as serving as a welcome distraction to ‘the wait’ for the deal, also turns out to be the best new film I’ve seen in ages. Some of the films I have to watch as a proviso to securing an interview with one/some/all of the stars are absolute tosh. This, though was something truly special. And a boxing film, to boot. I thought all the boxing films we’ll ever need had been made. But no, do yourself a favour: make sure you see
Southpaw
, it’s dynamite.

With my eyes red and my nose still snotty from all the repressed snivelling and sobbing I’d been doing during the flick – I’m such sucker for a weepy movie – I stumble back out into the blinding sunlight of a scorching hot central Soho.

Sunglasses on.

Head down.

March.

I turn on my phone expecting to see a ‘DEAL IS DONE. PLEASE COME SIGN’ text from my agent, Michael, but nothing. The cogs of corporate legal departments and interdepartmental alliance are still whirring away somewhere in north-west London.