Chris Moyles to host Radio X breakfast from 21st September [+ more station details]

[Jack_]

Chris Moyles reportedly set to make radio comeback with new breakfast show on XFM

After leaving the BBC back in 2012, Chris Moyles is set to return to the airwaves with a new breakfast show on XFM.

Moyles had a regular breakfast show on Radio 1 for eight years, his peak listening figures being 7.06 million, but was eventually replaced by the less successful Nick Grimshaw.

According to reports, the host signed a “big money deal” with XFM on Wednesday. The show itself will compete directly with Grimshaw’s own and is rumoured to start in September.

Nick Grimshaw to compete with Chris Moyles in September Nick Grimshaw to compete with Chris Moyles in September A source told The Sun on Sunday: "It's a massive coup for XFM to be able to sign Chris.

"He was enjoying not having all of the usual pressures and early starts that come with breakfast radio so bosses were well aware that they had to offer him a great deal to entice him back.

"He plans to spend the next two months developing ideas for the new show and how he wants the format to be.

"Chris will also take a networking trip to LA."

Rumours that he might take over the prime time slot at the commercial station originally surfaced in April.

The show has been presented by Sony, Bafta and Comedy Award-winning comedian Jon Holmes since January 2013.

The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/chris-moyles-reportedly-set-to-make-radio-comeback-with-new-breakfast-show-on-xfm-10367013.html)

There's been speculation about this in the radio world for a while now, hopefully these reports mean it's true and we get a press release soon :cheer2:

Three years has been long enough, one of the only radio DJs I would actually follow to another station

[zakman440]

OMG please make it happen :fc:

[Natalie.]

I'd love this, please :D

[Jack_]

Well the rumours surrounding this and XFM's expected rebranding have rolled on for a very long time now but in recent weeks there's been many signs that it's actually happening...

Global recently registered radiox.co.uk and x.co.uk as domain names, the worst logo I have ever seen has been listed on the IPO website for over a month (https://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/1/UK00003121226), and Chris himself earlier uploaded this video...

hlW9-kChR74

I am soooooo excited :cheer2:

Most of the rumours have pointed towards a rebranded station, Radio X, with Moyles at breakfast, Vernon Kay to follow and either Johnny Vaughan or Richard Bacon at drive with Ricky Wilson from the Kaiser Chiefs having a weekend show.

With the rumour mill ramping up in recent weeks hopefully official confirmation is right around the corner, the relaunch is supposed to be in two weeks max after all...

[Pete.]

From Radio 1 to XFM

[T*]

Yaaas

[Natalie.]

That video made me so excited :joker:

[Jack_]

640600900751499264

yaaaaaaaasssss :cheer2: :cheer2: :dance:

About ****ing time! Just waiting on a press release from Global now confirming full details of the rebranding

[zakman440]

The saviour of radio returns :clap1:.

[Jack_]

His first newspaper interview in four years with Dan Wooton is in The Sun tomorrow, but it's been published online and is a great read!

I may be the saviour of digital radio
EXCLUSIVE: Former BBC star Chris Moyles is back on air... and fighting fit

AFTER three years in the showbiz wilderness, CHRIS MOYLES is a shadow of his former self. In more ways than one.

We’re sitting in his beloved local pub in North London, but for lunch he’s just ordered a chicken salad and a pint . . . of water.

To illustrate just how much he’s changed, Chris is talking me through how many miles he’s run this week (35-and-a-half, it turns out, in six separate jogs).

But reports of Moyles’ retirement have been greatly exaggerated — radio’s most controversial host is back.

Two weeks today, he’ll be going head-to-head with his Radio 1 breakfast show successor NICK GRIMSHAW on Radio X, a new national commercial station that will replace XFM after 23 years.

Radio X will be digital in most of the country, apart from London and Manchester where it will have an FM frequency.

It’s a comeback that has been secretly planned for months — and the stakes are high.

Radio giant Global is pumping millions into the new station, which will feature an A-list new line-up built around Moyles, who is now 41.

This is his first interview in four years and he admits to being “nervous” — something I’ve never seen during our many feisty encounters over the past decade.

He’s far more thoughtful and measured than when he got Radio 1’s biggest gig 11 years ago and quickly declared he was the BBC station’s “saviour”.

“I’ve been off the grid. I haven’t done anything in the public eye for the last few years,” he tells me.

“But I’m really genuinely happy at the moment. I’m very content with my life and at a really good place. I’m a lot more positive than I used to be.

“I think one of the reasons is because I’m not on the radio every day I’m not subconsciously looking for things to take the p*** out of.

“Plus, I’m not getting up really stupidly early in the morning.

“If you’re getting up any time before 6am it’s s*** and it really affects you.”

All that begs one obvious question . . .

He says: “I see the underlying question you’re asking is, ‘Why ******* up that happiness by going back to quarter to five alarm clocks?’

“Because I think it’s time. People are always asking me when I’m going back to the radio. Even though it’s years since I left.”

Chris stresses his entertainment exile was entirely self-imposed. “I wanted to take some time off. I took a year off but it went really quickly so I thought I’d have another year off,” he says.

“It was really quiet for the first six months or so. I was thinking: ‘Oh my God, literally nobody wants to give him a job.’

“When you’re at the very top, your options are limited — and I’m an acquired taste.

“I didn’t miss it enough to want to go back to radio just to be on. But I never retired, contrary to what other papers have said.”

Was he bothered by people suggesting he was a spent force?

He laughs wryly, before saying to me accusingly: “You might have been one of those people talking about two years ago.”

He’s referring to my reports about his brief foray into live broadcasting on the mobile phone app Periscope, which was not exactly a big success.

But in fairness, I’ve been astonished it’s taken this long for a commercial station to snap up Moyles, given the continued loyalty from his former listeners and their obvious dislike of Grimmy on Radio 1.

Did you have enough money to live without working?

“Yes,” he answers nonchalantly. “I’m really lucky. I worked on Radio 1 for 15 years and I don’t have a lavish lifestyle.”

For the first time today, Chris admits he was sacked from the breakfast show on Radio 1 by the station’s controller Ben Cooper.

He had intended to see out ten years as host of the breakfast show before quitting live on air.

But Chris reveals: “Ben called me in for a meeting and said: ‘It’s time. We need to wrap this up.’

“I’d done eight-and-a-half years. I’d decided at nine-and-half-years I’d turn the mic on one morning and say: ‘When my contract runs out at Christmas, I’m not going to re-sign. I’m off.’

“That would have been ten years on the Breakfast Show. So my reaction when Ben told me was: ‘You s***bag, you’ve just blown my announcement by a year.’”

Chris was offered his pick of any other role on Radio 1 but he says: “I’d always said that when I stopped doing the Breakfast Show, I would leave. I didn’t really have any intention of coming back.”

Despite speculation, Chris insists there were no discussions about him joining Radio 2, saying: “I don’t think I’m the right fit for them. That was never, ever, ever in my head at all.”

Now he’s going to cause a serious headache to Grimmy, whose Radio 1 show has already shed millions of listeners in the station’s bid to attract younger listeners.

Chris says Radio 1’s desire to take the station so young is “quite frankly b******s”, adding: “People grow up with it and they don’t want to leave it. It’s an unnecessary change.”

He adds cheekily: “I don’t care if you’re 25, 45, 85, 15, male, female, gay, straight, black, white, I don’t care. I’ll have everybody. You will be welcome with open arms and you don’t need to pay for us.”

Chris is generally supportive of Grimmy but it’s clear he thinks his breakfast show is morphing closer into the show he had been doing for many years.

So has he done a good job? “Well . . . ” Chris stammers. “He’s certainly done the job they’ve asked them to do. Well no, he’s tried to do the job they asked him to do. But it’s an impossible task.

“It was going to be all different and all about the music without people in the studio, but it is.

“They have a couple of features that are actually quite similar to what we did.”

Chris adds: “It will be turned into this big war but we’re going for different audiences.”

Moyles says his personal relationship with Grimmy is cordial, but he can’t resist a little tease.

“He’s the main person from Radio 1 who I keep bumping into.

“We always have a chat and a hug and say we’re going to hang out, but then Nick never does anything about it because, guess what, he’s lost in that breakfast world where he’s a zombie.

“Actually Nick looks really good. He hasn’t gone through that fat breakfast DJ stage yet.

“I have no idea how he’s done it but he’s very wise.”

So how big does Moyles think his new show can be?

“I genuinely don’t know. I want to double the audience that exists on that show now.”

Is he the saviour of Radio X? “I don’t know . . . I might be the saviour of digital radio.”

And in that one moment, a flash of the old Moyles swagger reappears.

He smiles and says: “I’m 41 which I can’t *******ing quite believe. But that means I can just be me.”

‘I've got control’

CHRIS has poached top Radio 1 producer Pippa Taylor to run his new show and newsreader Dominic Byrne will be back.

But ALED JONES and Comedy Dave Vitty won’t be.

Chris explains: “Aled’s an editor at the BBC now so is staying. Dave’s not going to do the show because he’s got his own production company, but I can’t replace him.”

Moyles caused the BBC headaches with a string of controversial items that sparked complaints and negative headlines. But he has no intention of toning any of that down for Radio X.

He says: “I was very clear it had to be with my team and me doing what I want to do, carte blanche. The fact I can do whatever I want is a huge thing for me.

“Radio’s very safe in this country. You don’t have to do a lot to shock people.

“They know what they’re hiring. I’ve said I’ll get figures up and make them money if they let us get on with it.”

Slimming ‘so hard’

CHRIS has kept the weight off after settling down with a new girlfriend who he won’t name but says isn’t famous.

His body transformation is “mainly” down to a completely overhauled diet.

“My weird problem is that I don’t eat enough now,” he says.

His eating regime consists of an omelette before he trains in the morning, salad for lunch and a small dinner.

He says: “I don’t know what I used to think when I looked in the mirror when I was at my worst.

“Now if I go out on a Friday or Saturday and have a few beers, I can see that I’m bloating in the mirror on Sunday.”

But he admits: “I fall off the wagon sometimes and buy a pack of salt and vinegar chip sticks and a pack of cookies and eat them, and I feel bad about myself and cry myself to sleep. That happens.

“It’s really, really, really hard to lose weight. I don’t care what anyone says. It’s easier to say than to do.”

Read the article on The Sun website here (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/6625578/Chris-Moyles-says-he-may-be-the-saviour-of-digital-radio.html)

[Jack_]

Few points to summarise:

- He has now admitted he was forced to leave the breakfast show and it wasn't a mutual decision, confirming once and for all that Ben Cooper is a moronic, incompetent, station-ruining ****. As are the ageist BBC Trust. As if fulfilling one and a half more years of a contract that he had already signed was going to be that much of an issue :rolleyes:

- Pippa who worked on his Radio 1 show for a time, and more recently produced Greg James' drive show, has left Radio 1 and will join Chris' team

- Dominic Byrne who already works for Global (LBC I believe) will also be joining the team :cheer2: sadly no Dave (whom fell out with Chris a long time ago) or Aled however

- An important point of negotiation with his contract is that he has been given free reign to do with the show what he wishes, as it should be!

- And finally, just how bloody good does he look these days...what a fantastic job he's done :clap1:

http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemitlum/archive/02477/05_5ca46fae-54c8-1_2477015a.jpg

[Black Dagger]

Oh I didn't know he and Dave fell out.

[Jack_]

Oh I didn't know he and Dave fell out.

Yeah it's rather sad, it's kind one of those open showbiz secrets that are never confirmed, but there were pictures of Chris on holiday with Dave's ex-wife (Jayne Sharp) and several other friends shortly after their divorce, and apparently Dave took offence to this. If you watch any of the live streams they did of the last few shows there is little interaction between Chris and Dave when they're off-air

[Crimson Dynamo]

Best kept secret

I hate xfm music but of course will listen


Hope there is a Dave amnesty

[Firewire]

I don't have Radio X welp

[Ashley.]

I'd rather him replace Grimshaw on Radio 1 tbh but life's a bitch

[the truth]

moyles is the worlds most over rated most forgettable man

[Natalie.]

Yeah it's rather sad, it's kind one of those open showbiz secrets that are never confirmed, but there were pictures of Chris on holiday with Dave's ex-wife (Jayne Sharp) and several other friends shortly after their divorce, and apparently Dave took offence to this. If you watch any of the live streams they did of the last few shows there is little interaction between Chris and Dave when they're off-air

I hope they make up one day, Dave back some day would be great
I'll be listening :dance:

[Jack_]

Global released full details of the rebrand this morning:

CHRIS MOYLES TO HOST NEW BREAKFAST SHOW ON RADIO X

After a summer of speculation with more gossip than there was sunshine, it’s finally here! Today, we can confirm the launch of the most hotly-anticipated new radio station across the UK in recent years, and the long-awaited return of one of radio’s biggest personalities.

On Monday September 21st Chris Moyles will be back on the air from 6.30-10.00 am to give the nation its first taste of Radio X, a brand new national radio station playing the best fresh rock and guitar-based music across the UK.

Also confirmed are household name presenters Vernon Kay on mid-mornings, Johnny Vaughan at drive and Kaiser Chiefs frontman Ricky Wilson at weekends.

This concludes several months of guesswork from the media industry, with more big names mooted than there have been rumours about Oasis getting back together. Together with Chris Moyles at breakfast, they will inject a huge dose of personality into the new station.

Vernon Kay, Radio X mid-morning presenter, said: “I’m excited to be getting back on the radio. The launch of Radio X is the dawn of a new era in radio. There is a real buzz around the station because we know that this is going to be a lot of fun… It’s going to be a real honour to have Chris Moyles as my warm-up, bringing his unique style of broadcasting back onto the radio waves.”

Johnny Vaughan, Radio X drive time presenter, said: “They say there’s nothing better than that ‘new car’ smell. Well, there is… it’s the smell of a brand new drive time show on a brand new radio station being listened to in that brand new car! Great Britain needs great banter and I can’t wait to be back on air five days a week talking to people up and down the UK as we get them home with a bit of a laugh and some awesome music!”

Ricky Wilson, Radio X weekend presenter, said: “XFM was the first station to invite me and the band down for a session, way before we were even called Kaiser Chiefs. They were right there for us and many, many other bands from the very beginning of their histories, through all incarnations, career ups and downs, break ups and come backs. Even talking recently to other bands and musicians about the station, everyone has very fond things to say about it, so it makes me both proud and excited to be right there at the beginning of a new chapter as Radio X launches as the new rebel of the airwaves.”

Radio X will be home to the world’s freshest rock and guitar-based music, playing the biggest songs from these genres. Regulars on the playlist will include Florence And The Machine, Mumford And Sons, Blur, Arctic Monkeys, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, The Maccabees, Radiohead, Nirvana, The Smiths, Royal Blood, Kasabian, Catfish And The Bottlemen and Kings Of Leon.

Radio X will champion new music, taking over from XFM, which has been instrumental in breaking acts including Royal Blood, The xx, Arctic Monkeys, Jamie T, Kings Of Leon, The Killers, Everything Everything and Biffy Clyro .

Radio X will launch right across the UK on Monday September 21st at 6.30am with a new multi-million pound national advertising campaign. In the coming months, Chris Moyles will hit the road with some of his favourite bands and artists to bring listeners across the country a series of exclusive live music events. The strapline for the brand new Radio X is “Get into the Music”.

Radio X will be available all across the UK on the digital radio platform D1, as well as on 104.9FM in London and 97.7FM in Manchester from Monday September 21st 2015 . Its brand new mobile app will launch before September 21st.

XFM (http://www.xfm.co.uk/news/chris-moyles-to-host-new-breakfast-show-on-radio-x/#k4ssK1yfc88cr8cQ.99)

And in even better news, Sandy Beech (best name ever) whom has written and produced Chris' jingles in the past has confirmed he has begun work on the new show! :D

[JoshBB]

As long as grimmy keeps his job, I like him

[Jack_]

The sooner Greg and Grimmy swap show slots the better tbh

[Natalie.]

This starts tomorrow morning 6.30 am for anyone interested! :bigsmile:

[MB.]

"Great Britain needs great banter"

This is why assisted dying needs to be legal

[zakman440]

Just finished listening to this and I loved it. It's so great to have Chris back on the radio! The only thing that I'm a little upset about is the sound package being so different to his Radio 1 show, but other than that I thoroughly enjoyed it!

[Crimson Dynamo]

Perched for tomoz

[AnnieK]

So pleased Chris is back on the radio....will be listening on my way to work tomorrow

[Jack_]

I went to a wedding yesterday and so forgot to set an alarm and so drunkenly overslept this morning and woke up at 10:30 :fist:

Caught up on the show now though and it was excellent! It's so good to have Chris and Dom back on air :love: I also didn't notice the lack of Dave either which is a good thing. I was expecting the new jingle package to be rocky and wasn't keen at first but it grew on me throughout the show. I do miss the old show closer though, this one doesn't sound as good :(

Nice touch with the start of the cheesy song cutting into the new theme as well, and I'm intrigued to hear whether there'll be a proper opening theme starting tomorrow (hope so) or whether they'll just start the link straight away.

LOVED the digs at Ben Cooper :joker: 'Ben would be having a heart attack about us talking about Carry On films', 'Rachel, Aled and Ben aren't here to tell us to play a song, we can do whatever we like' :joker:

I picked up on Chris' digs at Johnny 'Yawn' as well, I wonder if they still hate each other or whether it's just a running joke they're going to continue

Overall a great start, the ads are annoying and the reason I hate commercial radio but I can put up with them for Moyles! The music isn't really my thing either but it's listenable, and that's not really what I'm tuning into the show for anyway

Roll on tomorrow, and the next three years :cheer2:

[Jack_]

Top form this morning, the running into Smooth's studio links have been hilarious, as has the introduce/hit the vocal on Simply Red like they would on Smooth :joker:

And actually some alternative music is more than welcome, even if it's only brief :clap1:

[Natalie.]

Liked it so far, hope the other Dave settles in more soon

[Crimson Dynamo]

the smooth links with simply red were very good

and the hand over to big vern will be a highlight soon as well

[Jack_]

Yeah the new Dave is a bit corporate for my liking but hopefully he'll settle down soon, he's probably very nervous working with someone as big as Chris

What I am loving is that it seems it's definitely true that Global have given Moyles free reign to do what he likes and long may it continue. Honestly it feels as if the last three years haven't happened and he never went off air, two days in and it's back to the same routine of the show we all know and love :D

[Crimson Dynamo]

Chris is on Celeb Juice tonight

[Crimson Dynamo]

4 weeks in

what do you think?

[Natalie.]

It's like he's never been away and Dave has settled in more now

[Crimson Dynamo]

Here is the very funny "Angry Manc" from the Radio X Chris Moyles Breakfast Show

https://soundcloud.com/andrew-holland-6/chris-moyles-angry-manc-06-11-15

:joker:

[zakman440]

Hadn't seen this posted yet - Chris has helped lift Radio X to it's best ratings in 10 years :clap1:

Chris Moyles’s much-hyped return to radio provided a 39% boost in listeners and gave Radio X its best breakfast show figures in London in almost a decade.

Moyles was the star signing among a number of high profile names, including Johnny Vaughan and Vernon Kay, brought on board to launch Radio X, which replaced 20-year old Xfm, last September.

Moyles, who fronted a controversial big-budget TV campaign promoting the station, fuelled a 39% increase in listening to Radio X’s breakfast show in London with an average audience of 300,000 in the last three months of 2015.

It is the biggest audience the station has attracted for its breakfast show since Alex Zane back in the first quarter of 2007.

Moyles was ousted from BBC Radio 1 almost four years ago in favour of Nick Grimshaw, who has had a tough time reversing a major decline in audience since taking over.

Grimshaw’s London listening figures were not hurt by the return of Moyles, with a slight 1.5% quarter-on-quarter increase to 1.7 million, according to the latest figures from official body Rajar.

Overall, Moyles’s Radio X breakfast show remains a minnow in London compared to not only the BBC but also his commercial rivals.

Capital’s breakfast show remained comfortably the most popular in London boosting its daily audience to an average of 1.08 million.

Bauer-owned Magic was second in the capital with 935,000.

Stablemate Kiss was third at 872,000, Heart was fourth at 741,000.

LBC rounded out the top five with an average of 695,000 listeners.

All the major commercial radio stations substantially improved their breakfast show audiences after experiencing a tough third quarter.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/04/chris-moyles-comeback-radio-x-biggest-audience-in-decade

[Jack_]

He's done an interview with Miranda Sawyer of the Observer:

Chris Moyles: ‘I was naive. People didn’t get the joke’

The controversial, interview-shy DJ is back on air with a breakfast show for Radio X – and enjoying a ratings surge. He’s older and slimmer… but is he any wiser?

When Terry Wogan died, much was made of his intimate broadcasting technique, how he made his radio shows seem personal by deliberately talking to one listener. The listener singular, rather than plural. Chris Moyles does not make radio like this.

“No,” he says. “I see it for what it is, people tuning in to listen in on a conversation. It’s a lovely idea, the idea of talking to your one listener, but it’s not what I do. Although, with Radio X, we could say we’re talking to one listener. We could almost name them… ”

He’s joking, of course, but, like most of Moyles’s jokes, there is a kick. He works for new station Radio X as its breakfast show host, and the day before we meet, the show’s first ever Rajar (Radio Joint Audience Research) figures are released. These figures, which you think would be straightforward – how hard is it to find out how many people listen to a radio programme? – are actually notoriously tricky to understand, a car crash of information and jargon. Before I meet Moyles, I exchange emails with Radio X’s press officer to try to make head or tail of what the figures might mean. It takes 10 emails to work it out.

So here you go. I can reveal that the total number of listeners to Chris Moyles’s Radio X breakfast show is… 300,000. But this number is only made up of Londoners who listen on FM. For some reason, Rajar hasn’t got any digital results yet, so when national digital listeners are added, this figure will rise. Plus, Radio X broadcasts on FM in Manchester too, and at some point these listeners will be counted as well. The show’s podcast has clocked up 1.6 million listeners so far, according to iTunes. Let’s say 300,000 for now, and check back in a few months.

Some people have already made their mind up about you, and whatever it is they want to say, they’re going to say it
Despite Moyles’s joke, the Rajar figures are fine, by the way. The station’s owner, Global Radio, is happy. The figures are up on the station’s previous breakfast show (when it was Xfm), and people are listening for longer. Anyhow, Radio X does not seem destined for massive numbers. It sells itself on middle-of-the-road indie music, an ageing interest; it’s a relaunch, of Xfm, and relaunches take ages to settle with the public. X is not Heart, or Capital, not even 6 Music. And it’s certainly not Radio 1.

Moyles, of course, will always be associated with Radio 1. He was a presenter there for 15 years, more than eight of them on the breakfast show, making him the station’s longest-serving breakfast DJ. From the start, he was cocky and gobby – and an instant hit, taking the listener numbers up by a million in his first three months, hitting 7.7 million at his peak. No wonder he sees 300,000 listeners as nothing. Does he worry about the competition?

“Well, when I was at Radio 1, I had the same competition I’ve got now – everybody from Capital to XFM. And when you’re on in the morning, everything’s competition. Having a lie-in is competition, putting the telly on is competition, getting the bus, not having enough 3G – everything is competition. You can drive yourself mad thinking about it, or just do what you do – get a good show.”

It was at Radio 1 that Moyles perfected his un-Wogan-ish broadcasting approach, which consists of him in a studio with three or four other people, chatting to one another about silly things. Less cosy whispering to one listener, more Radio Pub. He stole this technique, he says, from American shock jock Howard Stern, another rude radio iconoclast. Moyles is a broadcasting nerd, and he can remember the first time he heard Stern, at the home of a friend in the US. Despite not knowing anyone on the show (“not Robin or Fred, or Jackie” – he remembers the regulars’ names), he was instantly hooked.

“There were a lot of people talking, and I didn’t know who any of them were,” he says. “But it didn’t alienate me. It pulled me in enough that I wanted to know more, like why that joke about Robin was funny. I didn’t understand, but I listened every day for a week, and by the end of the week I was totally hooked. And there’s a mentality of that on my show. Rather than explain everything, just let people try and work it out.”

For me, this makes his show more fitting for Radio X than his previous employers. Moyles’s references were always a bit risque for Radio 1’s 15- to-24-year-old target audience; and at the Reithian BBC, letting young people try to work stuff out just wasn’t an option. Moyles was constantly having to justify himself, putting his foot in it, saying unacceptable things.

One of the most notorious incidents was in 2006, when he used “gay” as a derogatory term. He gets a bit upset when I bring this up, because, he protests, he doesn’t even remember saying it. (It was in a discussion about ringtones. He said: “I don’t want that one, it’s gay.”) It was a quick line in a long show, and he and his team didn’t pick up on its significance. He wasn’t told that a complaint had been made, nor that it had been discussed by a BBC panel. He wasn’t even informed of the panel’s decision (a clumsy one: the panel pronounced that young people do use “gay” in a disparaging way, so Moyles was fine to do the same. Of course, this only extended the controversy).

Today, Moyles likens what happened to a comedian’s standup show; specifically, Jimmy Carr’s. Carr got very heated when a line of his was quoted as an example of bigotry. Carr said that yes, that was exactly what he said, but the context had been completely removed, the build-up, the journey of performer and audience.

Though I don’t think this is a perfect analogy (Carr’s shows are carefully scripted, Moyles made an off-the-cuff remark), and I don’t think Moyles should have said it, I have some sympathy. His audience knew him well, he had a gay producer on air with him for ages and it is almost impossible to do a live show like the Radio 1 breakfast show for more than eight years without screwing up at some point. He says: “I was very, very naive through a lot of my Radio 1 time. I genuinely thought everybody got what I did – that maybe they didn’t like what I did, but they understood it. They’d got that it was all a joke. But they didn’t.”

Part of the problem, of course, was Moyles’s reputation. He’s tagged as a bit of a caveman. His two, awful biographies didn’t do much to disabuse anyone of this notion (lots of comments about “boobs” and “racks”), and he once said he’d take Charlotte Church’s virginity when she turned 16, but in real life, he doesn’t come over as such a horrible git. A bit old-fashioned in how he often comments on people’s gender or sexuality, but not discriminatory.

“I’m not homophobic, but what can I say about that?” he says. “Whatever I say sounds like ‘some of my best friends are black’. Christ almighty, one of my best friends came out a couple of years ago as transgender. Simon is now Steph, which is fine. But I don’t know what to say about that. Because if I say the wrong thing, I’ll be crucified in Leicester Square.”

Leicester Square is where Radio X is, of course. And – argh! – despite only being three months old, it too has managed to create its own non-PC controversies. Before it was even launched, the station became associated with an idea – probably a marketing ploy – that it was going to be a geezers’ station: “male-focused”, a place where women were not welcome. This seemed confirmed by its presenter signings: Moyles at breakfast, Vernon Kaye for mornings, Johnny Vaughan hosting the tea-time show. All three are experienced broadcasters, but their appeal is Old Lad; ’90s fellers who don’t act their age.

Moyles found the whole thing exasperating, but experience told him – and this was borne out – that “really quickly it was out of my hands. It should never have been said, and I never said it, but after a while, it’s nothing to do with me any more, because everyone else has run off with it and now they’re discussing sexism in the media, and sexism in the workplace, and should women get paid the same, it’s just gone off.” He went out of his way on his first show to say that it was nonsense. “You just have to roll your eyes and say, ‘We’re really not a Yorkie bar for radio’.”

He lights another cigarette. He loves a smoke, does Moyles. We’re sitting outside a nice pub in Highgate, so he can happily chuff on. It’s the afternoon. He’s already done his show and been to the gym and after we speak, he’s going to do some more training. Running. Is he going for a marathon? I wonder. But no. “This is all just to stop me being a fat bastard. It’s hard work.” Moyles has cleaned up his act when it comes to his appearance. He’s spruce in his leather jacket and jeans, and he smells nice. He’s also more charming than you might imagine – almost flirty – and disconcertingly focused on me and my life. I think he’d be a lot more comfortable if he were asking the questions. After about an hour, he actively tries to interview me.

He is definitely jumpy about the press. Determined to keep some parts of his life private, he brings the shutters down when I ask him questions he doesn’t like. His eyes, dark brown and unreadable at the best of times, turn almost black. This happens when I ask him about his old chum, “Comedy” Dave Vitty.

Comedy Dave was Moyles’s sidekick at Radio 1 for 14 years, starting as his broadcasting assistant, ending up as producer/contributor and funniest foil; he and Moyles racked up the longest ever continuous show – 52 hours of non-stop broadcasting – for Comic Relief in 2011 (their record has been beaten since). I listened to, then watched, that programme on the BBC red button, and it was a genuine tour de force. One of Moyles’s compadres told me she couldn’t believe that he could still drive the desk – work all the right buttons – on no sleep at all. “Actually,” says Moyles when I bring this up, “at one point I was looking for the golden hour jingle and I just stared at the screen. It was in the same place as it always is, with big letters that said GOLDEN HOUR, but I just couldn’t see it.”

Anyway, Comedy Dave. He has not come with Moyles to Radio X, though other Radio 1 regulars have (newsman Dominic Byrne, producer Pippa Taylor Hackett). Dave – who now co-owns a successful TV production company – has been replaced by another bloke called Dave.

The big falling out between the two supposedly occurred when original Dave split up with his wife, Jayne Sharp, and Moyles was photographed soon after with Sharp, apparently on holiday. He and Dave were still working on the radio show together every morning at the time. Some have said that the Radio 1 bigwigs were so worried about the Moyles-Dave on-air situation that they hurried Nick Grimshaw into the breakfast show slot a year earlier than planned. This hasn’t been verified, but Moyles and Dave had separate leaving parties.

When I ask about Dave, it becomes clear that there was – is – a problem. Moyles freezes and becomes almost monosyllabic. Did he not come to Radio X with you because you went on holiday with his ex-wife? I ask. “That’s what people have said.”

I push him a bit more and he says: “We haven’t spoken in a while. It’s no one’s business, but everyone’s business. The last time we spoke it was, ‘Good luck.’ ‘And you.’ All that. ‘Wish you all the best.’ ‘And yourself.’ ‘Thanks, pal.’ So… that’s it. That’s all I’ll say on that.”

The other time I get short shrift is when I ask him about his current love situation. He has a girlfriend, he confirms, but she doesn’t live with him (she doesn’t live in London) and she isn’t “in the business”. So it’s not actor Aiobhinn McGinnity then, as the tabloids seemed to think. He seems happy enough with his domestic set-up and doesn’t really want it to get more serious or traditional. He went on record ages ago saying that he’d rather have an iPod than a child; today, he says, “maybe an iPhone 7”.

“I’ve never really wanted to get married,” he says, “and I’ve never really wanted to have kids.” Does that limit you with women? “No, my face limits me with women,” he says. The joke with the kick. “Of course it’s true! It used to be true.”

“Look,” he says, “you get chastised for saying, ‘I’m too selfish to have kids,’ because people think it’s a cop-out. But the reality is, with all my friends that have kids, I don’t see them much any more, because they don’t have a minute left in the day. They’re permanently tired, it is a full-time job looking after children, and they are also trying to keep down a real full-time job, as well as everything else that everybody has to do, and I genuinely don’t know how they do it. Because I’m so used to my life. I’m like, ‘How would I cope?’”

This sounds like the boy who won’t grow up, but he insists he has. After he left Radio 1 in 2012, he went straight into rehearsals for Jesus Christ Superstar, as Herod, and the experience had a strong effect on him. For a start, it jolted him out of what he calls “the youth bubble” of Radio 1: he met performers who didn’t know who he was; 23-year-olds who called him grandad. And he met Tim Minchin, who was playing Judas, and they became great pals. Minchin, a musician, comedian, singer, writer and songwriter, seemed to inspire Moyles. “Tim said, ‘I just do what I want to do’ and I thought, ‘That’s what I want.’”

But what did he want to do? Well, after the Superstar tour was over, he wrote a pilot episode of a sitcom, about a washed-up radio host who wasn’t on radio any more and had no money and had to share a flat. He wrote far too much and the BBC turned it down, but he went to Los Angeles and met a few people who were encouraging, and since then he’s written three film screenplays and two sitcoms. He finds it hard – he doesn’t enjoy the planning, just wants to start writing dialogue – but “my writing’s got better, and they’re all just sitting there, these scripts. It’s not like it’s been a massive waste of my time, it’s just not been very lucrative.”

We move on to money. He once berated the BBC on air for not paying him. He says to me that he did this to divert attention from the fact that he’d been late three times to his show: he was splitting up with his long-term girlfriend, Sophie Waite, and was living in a hotel (“very Alan Partridge”). Still, it worked and he was paid. He’s witty about this, but then I ask him about being involved in a tax avoidance scheme, and he gets frustrated again. He gives me a very long explanation that boils down to: he thought it was OK and it turned out it wasn’t and he paid it back in full.

Moyles’s past will always dog him, but perhaps, now he’s older and less obsessed with what he thinks is cool, he won’t be putting his foot in his never-quiet mouth quite so much. He had two years off before Radio X came calling and it seems to have calmed him down. Plus, he’s 42 on Monday. Emma Freud once told him that he’s a decade late with his life (“I like that, because it sounds like an actual answer, where everyone else would just go, ‘You’re just immature’”), and he feels like he’s in his 30s, but hitting 40 has had an effect. He still drinks – he’s never taken drugs – but he stops when “I’m rubbing the inside of my bottom teeth with my tongue”. His life is streamlined, so that he only does radio, keeps fit, sees his girlfriend and writes. He’s considering a tattoo: either MLC (for midlife crisis), or a shamrock, to honour his Irish heritage.

And he still does his radio show, which he is loving. He loves radio, full stop. He gives me a whole spiel on why Steve Wright is amazing, on what he gets from Nick Abbot on LBC, how he listened to Jamie Theakston and Emma Bunton on Heart when he wasn’t on a breakfast show. He guides me to a new podcast, made by a cousin of his in Dublin. He’s a loyal employee: when he was on Radio 1, he listened to Radio 1. Now, he’s tuned to Radio X, listening to Johnny Vaughan while running.

Plus he has done this interview to promote his show. “I don’t really do interviews any more because it’s just pointless,” he says. “I don’t really get anything out of it. Some people have already made their mind up about you, and whatever it is they want to say, they’re going to say it. I did a piece once, years ago, and when it came out, she was really snide. And right at the end, she goes, ‘He’s actually all right though.’ And you go, ‘You know what? What can I do?’ You can’t change people’s opinions.

“I’m on the radio, everything is turned up and heightened, and I’m trying to make people laugh for three and a half hours a day, five days a week. I say things that are a bit silly, and I’ve said things that are mistakes. But… it’s an act. You know, like Keith Lemon is an act. When the Daily Mail would constantly have a go at me, I’d be like, ‘But it’s not for you. It’s not for your readers. It’s like complaining that a library doesn’t sell sausages.’ But it doesn’t make any difference. I just get pinned for it.”

He takes a breath. “Yeah, I know. Boo ****ing hoo".

The Observer (http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/21/chris-moyles-naive-joke-radio-x-breakfast-show-interview)