In a recent interview with The Guardian, Greg James admitted
that he’d actually sh/t himself on the train on the way to speak at our very
own Oxford Union. According to him this “may or may not have been the day after
the Brits” so we’ll let you put two and two together on this one…
It’s this kind of laid-back, witty and approachable aura
that impressed me when I spoke to the Radio 1 Breakfast Show DJ after his event
at the Union. We talked about everything from his radio career and fundraising
efforts to his university years and love of cheese and wine and, throughout our
entire conversation, he was so at ease that I never would have guessed his
traumatic train experience. It’s this relaxed and friendly approach which James
tries to channel into his radio shows, spending time working on a more “natural
style of presenting” like that of Terry Wogan, someone he counts among his
heroes.
“There’s a lot of people on the radio that don’t actually
understand what a radio show should sound like. It can be in the way they
speak, sort of ‘Hello guys, hey you lot, how are you?’. But saying ‘How are
you?’ is quite weird. What, are you supposed to go ‘Fine thanks!’? “It’s making
sure you’re absolutely talking to one person. Just like you would do in the pub
or something, when you’re like ‘oh did you see that thing on Netflix or here’s
a funny email that I got.”
I experience first-hand the impact and resonance this
approach has with his listeners, as we have to pause our interview on two
occasions when students come over to say hello to Greg. Each time he is more
than happy to chat with them, asking their names and what they study, and
agreeing to take selfies with them. When Greg turns back to me the second time,
he explains how important it is that people feel they have some sort of
relationship with him. “That’s my only aim, to feel like they can just say hi
to the point where sometimes they think they actually know me. Sometimes I even
go ‘sh/t do I know you?’ and then I have to go ‘hmmmm no I don’t.”
The 33-year-old has an obvious talent for connecting with
the ordinary person, something which has helped entice 300,000 additional
listeners to the Breakfast Show since he took over from Nick Grimshaw
(‘Grimmy’) at the end of last year. It’s well known that Grimmy is pals with
the likes of Rita Ora, Harry Styles, Alexa Chung and Kate Moss – it only takes
a glance at his Instagram to see his star-studded contact list. But James insists
he is the flip side of the coin (or the CD?). “You need a Grimmy for there to
be a me. You need to balance off someone.”
“I’ve never been interested in celebrities really, I’m not
interested in fame. I don’t find all famous people automatically interesting,
so it would be disingenuous for me to go on and pretend to want to talk to
people I don’t want to talk to.” This strikes a particular note with me,
especially as the modern media seems obsessed with what David Beckham had for
lunch or the colour of Meghan Markle’s tights, often at the expense of the more
acute issues of the day. Instead of the likes of Mr Beckham or the Duchess of
Sussex, James says his real focus is the listeners.
“I’ve always found that listeners are more interesting than me or any guest you could have on. There’s 6 million people, with 6 million lives and stories to tell. I used to love hearing a caller be funny. There’s something very empowering about making the listener the star of the show. That’s what they should be. They’re literally paying for it and it’s a thing for them; it’s their show and they should be in control of it, to a certain extent.”
The desire to engage and connect with his listeners is
what’s often inspired James to embark on his more ‘whacky’ projects for the show,
and he uses the example of the “stupid pass the pasty idea”. After a listener
from Scotland called in and admitted, to many peoples’ horror, that he had
never tried a Cornish pasty, the team at Radio 1 decided to send a pasty from
Padstow in Cornwall all the way up to Aberdeenshire via the listeners. Yes, the
only companions the pasty had on its long trip was Greg’s producer, a
microphone and various Radio 1 listeners.
“[My producer] would give the microphone to a listener and
suddenly they were the commentator, or they were the reporter on the scene, and
that’s a really special thing that you wouldn’t see on TV really…”
It’s here that James’ brain gives out on him and the revels
of the previous night are hinted at. There’s a long pause, interspaced with
various ‘ummms’, ‘errrrs’ and a “sorry my brain is a bit dead”, before Greg
re-boards his train of thought and continues on.
“The listeners more often than not step up. They know the
spirit of the show I guess, they know how to deliver it. They get the joke and
they understand that it’s a very silly thing done very seriously. It’s really
magical to hear a listener just sort of run with it and go. “We had a plumber,
I think, who took [the pasty] from Manchester train station on a steam train.
This guy just woke up in the morning and was going to his job, and suddenly he
was the star of the breakfast show.”
In what I assume is his attempt at a Mancunian accent, Greg
explains: “He was just like ‘We’re at the train station, big beautiful steam
engine there and it’s a beautifully sunny day and the smoke’s billowing through
the station.’ “It was this really beautiful description and I’m just like this
guy didn’t know he was going to be on the Breakfast Show this morning and
suddenly he’s the thing that brightened lots of peoples’ day.”
Although he’s likely too modest to admit it, Greg himself is
also in the business of brightening peoples’ day. Listeners of his radio show
will remember Katie, a primary school teacher from Kent, who had just been
dumped by her boyfriend. Katie well and truly had her day brightened by Greg
when he invited her to be his (platonic) date to the Brit Awards 2019.
“Bringing along a teacher from Kent, who’s just been dumped, to the Brits is
just like ‘c’mon, this is all nonsense’ – it’s wonderful nonsense the Brits is
– so that was really fun. To see it through fresh eyes is really great. Hearing
her go ‘Oh we saw P!nk, we were up close to P!nk’ because you can get a bit
desensitised to the whole thing, a bit blasé like ‘ah it’s just the Brits’. But
then suddenly you see it though Katie’s eyes and you go ‘oh yeah, this is fun’
and she really nailed it.”
The DJ showed promise as a radio DJ early on, winning ‘Best
Male Presenter’ at the Student Radio Awards 2005. I ask him about his start in
student radio, but he explains his passion for radio began long before he
enrolled at UEA to study English and Drama. At 13, he began making his own
radio shows in his bedroom, messing around with the jingles and recreating the
chart show, but “didn’t really tell anyone about it”. From there he joined the
local hospital radio station, taking requests and digging out CDs, before
getting involved with Livewire at UEA. A desire to learn everything there was
to know about the industry characterised James’ early radio career and he is
keen to emphasise that he is still learning, even after over a decade at BBC
Radio 1.
“You have to be obsessive. You have to be a nerd about it. I
think you have to know everything, even things you don’t need to know. I need
to know what Classic FM do, I need to know what Capital FM are up to at 4pm, I
need to know all these things to know where I fit in.”
After his award in 2005, Greg did some shows for a radio
station in Newcastle. It was then that Radio 1 got wind of the rising talent
and invited him in for a pilot. He did his first show the day after he
graduated. “When I got to Radio 1, I was very very new and I didn’t know
anything about myself and I didn’t really understand about the radio industry
that much, but I had been working at it. I wouldn’t say I’d been working hard,
I’d just been enjoying it. I think in the last few years I’ve really tapped
back into why I do it in the first place, and it’s because I enjoy it. You
shouldn’t overthink it any more than that.”
After starting out on the Early Breakfast Show, starting at
4am, Greg moved to the drivetime show, where he accompanied listeners on their
journey home from work. But after six years the DJ was beginning to grow out of
this, and he says the move back to early mornings came at the right time,
despite getting up before the crack of dawn. “I was done with the afternoon
show. I’d had enough of finishing at. It’s just a long time to do any job, six
years, and I needed a change and a new challenge. The getting up is all doable,
and you know that it’s not going to last forever. There’ll be a time when they
don’t want me to do the Breakfast Show on Radio 1, so you just grab it. “Also,
going to bed at 9.30pm is such a great excuse not to go to things.” (If this
isn’t relatable content…)
I’m keen to talk to Greg about his other great passion aside
from radio – fundraising for charities. But his fund-raising efforts are more
than your average bake sales, charity auctions or ‘celebrity experiences’. In
2013, Greg braved the crocodiles of the Zambezi River and in 2016 he completed
five triathlons in five days. However, perhaps the most remarkable was his
‘Gregathlon’ which saw Greg cycle up the highest mountains in Wales, England
and Scotland to raise money for Sport Relief’s projects to support young people
living with mental health conditions. This challenge was especially gruelling
and for a short while it looked like the infamous ‘Beast from the East’ might
have ruined everything. But as soon as the harshest part of the storm subsided,
Greg was back on his bike and competed his challenge, raising over £1 million.
“[The Gregathlon] became a metaphor for how people overcome
their mental health issues. You couldn’t have written it any better really. We
set out in the first week and I remember we all said to each other ‘I don’t
know how this is going to go, but whatever the story is tell it and point a
microphone at it, and jot all those little details down’. It’s all those little
things that bring the story to life.” We talk a little about mental health, an
especially acute issue at Oxford, as well as many other universities around the
country.
Greg’s father-in-law, Alan Rusbridger, has been the
Principal of Lady Margaret Hall since 2015, and Greg tells me that speaking to
Alan has really opened his eyes to the problem. “[Alan’s] been surprised at how
much he’s needed to learn quickly on the job about the stresses and strains
that all the people who work and study here are under. How there’s never enough
provision for peoples’ mental health. “You’re under a lot of pressure to
deliver here, and you’re literally surrounded by the weight of this history of
this place. It’s quite oppressive actually. It’s lovely on the one hand, but
it’s largely irrelevant what Michael Gove did thirty years ago to what you’re
doing now. It’s nice to have a history of a place, but people can get weighed
down and overawed by it.”
Greg has his own experiences with mental health – his wife
Bella has recently released a book, ‘Jog On: How Running Saved My Life’. Finding
Bella is obviously something Greg is hugely grateful for, and he mentions it
when I ask him about his greatest achievements. “Getting married is probably a
thing I never thought would happen. I think I needed Bella to just give me the
confidence to really go for the things that I believe in. She’s a really
extraordinary person, and I think we really help each other because she suffers
with confidence and anxiety and OCD. She’s been a really amazing addition to my
life.”
It’s at this point we are interrupted again, though this
time it is not a fan eager for a selfie. I am told to put my laptop away,
since, of course, there are “no laptops permitted in the Union bar”. I spend
the remaining five minutes of the interview surreptitiously peeking at my screen.
Greg has a couple of bits of parting wisdom for me. He tells me that he is a
qualified racing driver, that his first job was stacking papers in WHSmith, but
he also tells me that the most important thing in life is to “be kind.” Having
recently attracted media attention for ‘defending the snowflake generation’,
Greg explains “being kind isn’t boring. It’s unfashionable to be kind, it’s
much better to be shouty and a bit of an arsehole. Being an arsehole is in
fashion.”
When we’re done, Greg transitions smoothly into his next
appointment even though, in his own words, he feels “tonight I’m just going to
put my mask on and then my ear plugs and just fall asleep as if I was in a
coffin. I’m on my knees.” That’s the life of a radio star – the Brits, the
Breakfast Show, the Oxford Union, and an interview with Cherwell, all in a days
work.
