Interview: Christian O'Connell, Xfm (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
CHRISTIAN O'Connell is in trouble again. Not as much trouble as the time he played a Chris Morris remix of a George W Bush speech, unaware as he nipped to the toilet that it was waking his Xfm breakfast audience with a career-risking stream of obscenities. Nor is it quite up there with his sacking as the "shock jock" of Winchester hospital radio, for stopping a record halfway through "because the old lady requesting it has just died".
Still, it probably wasn't wise to declare on air that John Stapleton, a GMTV presenter in Kuwait, was actually faking his reports from Kew Gardens. "I've had to write a letter of apology," O'Connell admits with a naughty grin. "There were official complaints on that one."
He may have beaten Terry Wogan last week to win the Sony Radio Award for best breakfast show, while juggling a nightly live TV show on Five, but O'Connell, 30, is not quite ready to tame his risk-taking side. Hired by Chris Evans to replace Chris Moyles on the troubled Live With ... television show, he recently decided to make jokes about Evans's court appearance to give evidence in his claim against Virgin Radio.
"It was a real talking point when Chris started crying, so we thought we'd take the mickey out of him," he says as he unwinds after presenting Monday's breakfast show. "He wasn't best pleased, to say the least - but I'm doing a TV show for the audience, not for him." The channel, too, has had "issues" with O'Connell, most recently for letting slip the words "ball-bollocker", "cow" and "bloody" in the same half-hour. "Who runs that station, the Amish?" he says dismissively of Five. "They chuck back a lot of the good ideas, and I just don't think they have the guts for this show. It makes me f***ing livid." Not quite the diplomatic approach towards station bosses who are currently deciding the series' future.
Two minutes before a recent show, he had a "huge argument" with channel executives in which he says he threatened to leave if they vetoed an item. Inspired by reports of a woman waking from a seven-year coma at a Bryan Adams concert, he took a coma patient on a stretcher around Islington. "First we took him for a haircut, but the barber refused. We had more luck at the cinema, where they let us in, though I did ask the popcorn guy if he could grind it up for the patient." The channel did not care that the "patient" was an actor.
The programme's ratings have been even lower under O'Connell than Moyles, often around 200,000, for which he partly blames the war leading viewers to news programmes. But he says his "bum reviews" have not got him down.
It's the radio show - described by the Sony judges as "compelling listening, inventive and very funny" - that gives him his buzz. "To be honest, I haven't enjoyed TV as much as breakfast radio," he says. "I genuinely love that freedom, the connection you can make with the audience. I'd like to do more TV, but only if I get more freedom than I do on Five." He has been called "the new Chris Evans", something he finds "embarrassing" rather than flattering. "I was offended - I'm not ginger, I don't own the radio station, and I don't hang out with Geri Halliwell," he says, as ever playing for laughs. In truth, their relationship has not been entirely smooth.
"We've had a couple of clashes, to put it mildly," O'Connell admits. "His pigeonhole is very near mine, and I noticed he had tickets to a couple of premieres, so we gave them away on the show. He genuinely did go berserk. Have you ever seen a six-foot ginger bloke shouting? It's frightening - a ginger meltdown." They have also clashed over Evans's more favourable view of the Stereophonics, whom O'Connell refused to have on the programme. "I told him it's my show, so I couldn't give a s*** what he thinks."
BESIDES, they have different approaches to comedy. "I don't like doing victim stuff," O'Connell says. "I hate the kind of male radio that's based on slagging things off. Anyone can do that. I find it more of a challenge to be original, intelligent, finding something to say that people haven't thought of. I've got a low boredom threshold."
He developed his mischief-making radio style while performing stand-up comedy, "dying on my arse at night while failing as a sales rep during the day". He was selling advertising space in Amateur Photographer to people such as Thomas Hamilton, who carried out the Dunblane killings. "He was just a nightmare customer, a nutcase," he recalls. "He'd spend an hour on the phone ranting at you about the videos he was advertising, saying: 'I'm not a pervert.' The day after the shootings someone called from the Daily Mirror saying they'd found my number on his phone logs, and who was I?"
After six frustrating months on Bizarre magazine - "I could not give the advertising away" - he took his wife's advice to move into radio sales and wait for a lucky break. It came after four months when, drinking with a programme controller, he demanded a show - and got one in Bournemouth, and then another in Liverpool.
After bombarding Xfm with tapes, he came to London in 2001. Since then, with sidekick Chris Smith, his has become, as he proudly announces, "the 13th most-listened-to breakfast show in London".
He says he has been approached three times to join Virgin, but his response was to doorstep the station's offices with a megaphone, telling them "the game's over" and suggesting that they syndicate his Xfm show. Nor does he mince his words about rival breakfast presenters: Jono Coleman's show at Heart is "formulaic and onedimensional", Bam Bam's on Kiss is "evidence that evolution can go into reverse", and Chris Tarrant at Capital is "on the way out".
But what of his own 40,000 audience slump in the latest quarterly ratings, now down to around 250,000? "The 40,000 must have died," he says. "There is no other explanation. So we're organising 'Christian aid', a benefit concert to buy ourselves some new listeners. It will be the biggest thing London sees this year."
"Actually," he adds, "I was thinking of saying on this morning's show that I had a fatal illness and had only three months to live. People would feel sorry for me, the ratings would go up, and I'd say that thanks to their love I'd got better." But for some reason, common sense got the better of him.
(Evening Standard, May 21 2003)
CHRISTIAN O'Connell is in trouble again. Not as much trouble as the time he played a Chris Morris remix of a George W Bush speech, unaware as he nipped to the toilet that it was waking his Xfm breakfast audience with a career-risking stream of obscenities. Nor is it quite up there with his sacking as the "shock jock" of Winchester hospital radio, for stopping a record halfway through "because the old lady requesting it has just died".
Still, it probably wasn't wise to declare on air that John Stapleton, a GMTV presenter in Kuwait, was actually faking his reports from Kew Gardens. "I've had to write a letter of apology," O'Connell admits with a naughty grin. "There were official complaints on that one."
He may have beaten Terry Wogan last week to win the Sony Radio Award for best breakfast show, while juggling a nightly live TV show on Five, but O'Connell, 30, is not quite ready to tame his risk-taking side. Hired by Chris Evans to replace Chris Moyles on the troubled Live With ... television show, he recently decided to make jokes about Evans's court appearance to give evidence in his claim against Virgin Radio.
"It was a real talking point when Chris started crying, so we thought we'd take the mickey out of him," he says as he unwinds after presenting Monday's breakfast show. "He wasn't best pleased, to say the least - but I'm doing a TV show for the audience, not for him." The channel, too, has had "issues" with O'Connell, most recently for letting slip the words "ball-bollocker", "cow" and "bloody" in the same half-hour. "Who runs that station, the Amish?" he says dismissively of Five. "They chuck back a lot of the good ideas, and I just don't think they have the guts for this show. It makes me f***ing livid." Not quite the diplomatic approach towards station bosses who are currently deciding the series' future.
Two minutes before a recent show, he had a "huge argument" with channel executives in which he says he threatened to leave if they vetoed an item. Inspired by reports of a woman waking from a seven-year coma at a Bryan Adams concert, he took a coma patient on a stretcher around Islington. "First we took him for a haircut, but the barber refused. We had more luck at the cinema, where they let us in, though I did ask the popcorn guy if he could grind it up for the patient." The channel did not care that the "patient" was an actor.
The programme's ratings have been even lower under O'Connell than Moyles, often around 200,000, for which he partly blames the war leading viewers to news programmes. But he says his "bum reviews" have not got him down.
It's the radio show - described by the Sony judges as "compelling listening, inventive and very funny" - that gives him his buzz. "To be honest, I haven't enjoyed TV as much as breakfast radio," he says. "I genuinely love that freedom, the connection you can make with the audience. I'd like to do more TV, but only if I get more freedom than I do on Five." He has been called "the new Chris Evans", something he finds "embarrassing" rather than flattering. "I was offended - I'm not ginger, I don't own the radio station, and I don't hang out with Geri Halliwell," he says, as ever playing for laughs. In truth, their relationship has not been entirely smooth.
"We've had a couple of clashes, to put it mildly," O'Connell admits. "His pigeonhole is very near mine, and I noticed he had tickets to a couple of premieres, so we gave them away on the show. He genuinely did go berserk. Have you ever seen a six-foot ginger bloke shouting? It's frightening - a ginger meltdown." They have also clashed over Evans's more favourable view of the Stereophonics, whom O'Connell refused to have on the programme. "I told him it's my show, so I couldn't give a s*** what he thinks."
BESIDES, they have different approaches to comedy. "I don't like doing victim stuff," O'Connell says. "I hate the kind of male radio that's based on slagging things off. Anyone can do that. I find it more of a challenge to be original, intelligent, finding something to say that people haven't thought of. I've got a low boredom threshold."
He developed his mischief-making radio style while performing stand-up comedy, "dying on my arse at night while failing as a sales rep during the day". He was selling advertising space in Amateur Photographer to people such as Thomas Hamilton, who carried out the Dunblane killings. "He was just a nightmare customer, a nutcase," he recalls. "He'd spend an hour on the phone ranting at you about the videos he was advertising, saying: 'I'm not a pervert.' The day after the shootings someone called from the Daily Mirror saying they'd found my number on his phone logs, and who was I?"
After six frustrating months on Bizarre magazine - "I could not give the advertising away" - he took his wife's advice to move into radio sales and wait for a lucky break. It came after four months when, drinking with a programme controller, he demanded a show - and got one in Bournemouth, and then another in Liverpool.
After bombarding Xfm with tapes, he came to London in 2001. Since then, with sidekick Chris Smith, his has become, as he proudly announces, "the 13th most-listened-to breakfast show in London".
He says he has been approached three times to join Virgin, but his response was to doorstep the station's offices with a megaphone, telling them "the game's over" and suggesting that they syndicate his Xfm show. Nor does he mince his words about rival breakfast presenters: Jono Coleman's show at Heart is "formulaic and onedimensional", Bam Bam's on Kiss is "evidence that evolution can go into reverse", and Chris Tarrant at Capital is "on the way out".
But what of his own 40,000 audience slump in the latest quarterly ratings, now down to around 250,000? "The 40,000 must have died," he says. "There is no other explanation. So we're organising 'Christian aid', a benefit concert to buy ourselves some new listeners. It will be the biggest thing London sees this year."
"Actually," he adds, "I was thinking of saying on this morning's show that I had a fatal illness and had only three months to live. People would feel sorry for me, the ratings would go up, and I'd say that thanks to their love I'd got better." But for some reason, common sense got the better of him.
(Evening Standard, May 21 2003)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, May 21, 2003
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