Thursday 24 November 2011

The Nonconformity Of Chris Evans

Listening to the Breakfast Show in the car this morning. As a song finishes, the DJ comments “The Germans are at it again”, then leaves the point to linger before an announcement and the next song, which by some bizarre coincidence is today’s Big Screen Belter – Liza Minnelli and “Cabaret”.

When the last echo of “Come To The Cabaret” fades away, Chris Evans – for it is he – picks up the thread and mentions to his co-presenter that Germany and France are due to have another meeting today “about us”, thinking out loud that it will be all about “forcing us to join up”, and moves quickly to the next song via what sounded to be a passing gloat about how no one had been interested in the bonds that the Germans had just put up for sale.

More power to your elbow, we may all have thought. But what makes him such a nonconformist in all of this? Simple, really. If there’s one national institution that has been slavishly, shamelessly and indeed institutionally Europhile for longer than we would all care to remember, it’s the BBC. And here was one of its most high profile presenters very obviously declining to toe the line.

If I had had any need for a DJ character in Hatred, Ridicule & Contempt, how tempting it would have been to choose Chris Evans as a role model.

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