Chris Evans turned up half an hour late for his Radio 2 breakfast show on Wednesday, turning the clock back for anyone who remembers his, er, occasionally erratic timekeeping hosting the breakfast show on Radio 1.
Vanessa Feltz, who presents Radio 2’s even earlier breakfast show, filled in for 30 minutes until Evan took the microphone just after 7am.
Feltz spent most of her extra time talking about a picture in the papers of her fellow DJ with the Duchess of Cornwall.
“Christopher Evans has issued an edict: he is going to be half an hour late to the programme, will I please take over,” Feltz said. “By royal appointment, by royal command, I will do whatever he tells me to do. My wish is his command.”
Later, Feltz wondered if Evans had gone back to Buckingham Palace and got carried away. “I’m thinking the party just continued. I reckon they had a Twiglet, some Ferrero Rocher and then I think Chris didn’t go home. I think Charles joined in, the whole thing was fun, fun, fun.”
Just in the nick of time Evans turned up – so quickly in fact that Feltz didn’t get the chance to say goodbye.
“Today’s show is dedicated to anyone who may have missed the first half hour, probably the best, the very best since we started our five-and-a-half-year run,” he told listeners. “Seriously, catch up with it on iPlayer. It was off the chart.”
Later, he thanked “Lady Vanessa” and said he owed her a “big drink, a bucketful, not that she does. Anyway, we’ll figure it out”.
A Radio 2 spokeswoman said: “Chris’s alarm didn’t go off this morning and he arrived just before 7am. He’s buying a new alarm clock.”
If Evans starts asking Radio 2 controller Bob Shennan for Fridays off, it really will be history repeating itself.
But then 90s nostalgia is still all the rage, right?
