Memoirs of a Fruitcake

For the record, thank you Sir David for getting us the invite to the Lloyd Webbers in the first place. Thank you

Maddie Lloyd Webber for following up with the phone call. Thank you Suzi for striking up a wine conversation with Andrew whilst walking down the road with him. Thank you Andrew for being so generous as to share with us your liquid treasure. Thank you Monsieur Sommelier for providing a wonderful and enthusiastic epilogue to the piece. And finally, thank you God for inventing grapes in the first place.

TOP 10 PERKS I GAVE OUT AS A BOSS

10 Meals and booze – hundreds of thousands of pounds worth – fabulous fun all round

9 Holidays

8 Cars

7 Golf membership

6 A wheelchair!

5 Rolls-Royce and driver

4 Christmas bonuses – always (very important this one)

3 Share options adding up to millions

2 A year’s salary to close colleagues

1 Ten per cent of annual salary to every employee in the company

ANOTHER GOOD THING ABOUT THE SOUTH OF FRANCE is that Nice airport is less than two hours away from London by plane, very handy if one has to return at short notice; something that was very much on the cards, as Suzi and I had embarked on this last trip shortly after our Langan’s decision to sell the radio station. In the meantime, DC and I were keeping in touch via telephone.

‘How’s France?’ he asked during one call.

‘Oh, you know – quiet,’ I replied.

‘Yeah, right.’

‘How are things there?’ I enquired. ‘Equally quiet,’ he said, laughing. ‘Ah, I see.’ I realised there was a quid pro quo on offer here. ‘Alright,’ I sighed, ‘will you tell me yours if I tell you mine?’

After a potted version of what Suzi and I had been up to in the last few days, DC wasted no time in getting down to the business of our business.

Having made the decision to sell the Ginger Media Group, the next step was to figure out exactly how we might go about it. This was the main thrust of David’s industry over the last few days. Whilst I’d been off gallivanting with various members of the entertainment industry, DC had been hard at it.

‘We’ve met with the major players from the banks who handle this kind of thing,’ he began, ‘and I’m delighted to say that Goldman Sachs look like they might be willing to take our sale on.’

I had no idea of the significance of this but it sounded like I ought to. I asked David to enlighten me further.

‘Goldman Sachs,’ he explained, ‘like all the big banks, offer many corporate financial services, as long as there’s plenty of fat on the bone left over for them. The thing is, though, at a projected sale price of only £175 million to £300 million, we as a company would not normally be worth their while, let alone the wholehearted attention and focus of one of their hot-shot city-slicker sales teams.’

‘Ah, I see,’ I said, trying not to sound too underwhelmed.

Eventually, after more detailed explanation I got it – sort of – and began to understand why DC did what he did for a living and I talked on the radio.

As the week progressed, my crash course in how to sell a company continued and I couldn’t help feeling that all the stars were once again lining up in our favour. Every phone call seemed to be a step forward, every conversation taking us closer to our goal.

The man from Goldman Sachs was convinced he could pull off the kind of deal we were after, and much sooner rather than later by the sounds of it. In fact, when I arrived back in Britain he already had several very interested parties banging on our door. Three stood out in particular; they were the French company NRG, the American company Clear Channel, and from Scotland, the Scottish Media Group.

It was soon time for me, along with the rest of the board, to attend another series of secret meetings around more of those ghastly, bad-taste mahogany tables.

I was never quite sure during these meetings whether we were courting the buyers or the buyers were courting us. I suppose there was no question they all wanted to sleep with us, but who was going to take their clothes off first?

As the discussions developed, just as when we were buying the radio station ourselves, it appeared that I was the main concern. Although this time it was not because I was seen as a risk – on the contrary, I had almost doubled the radio audience since taking over The Breakfast Show, adding millions of pounds to the bottom line – but rather because, along with my hosting TFI Friday every week, a lot of the value of the company now rested on my shoulders. The big question on everyone’s lips was, if we did sell, would I stick around and carry on and if so, for how long, and how much would I want paying?

Furthermore, when it came to my future salary they wanted to know if I would be prepared to take some of my fee in shares as opposed to having it all in cash, thus providing me with an incentive to carry on performing at the highest level.

The answers to these questions were key to any potential new owner.

I assured anyone who would listen that I had no intention of going anywhere. After all, this was what I loved doing and especially so when it was on my own terms. When it came to the issue of my salary, I had already taken a massive wage cut to increase our profits and therefore our value, and as long as I still had shares in the new company, I said I would be more than willing to continue on the same terms.

This is exactly what the parties concerned wanted to hear and helped bring the best out when it came to bidding. Several firm offers were made for our little outfit, the most attractive of which was £225 million from the Scots.

Were they really going to make us over a £100-million profit on a company that had only existed for just over two years? Yes they bloomin’ well were, and what’s more they did.

In March 2000 the biggest deal of my life was completed and the instant the papers were signed, I was out of debt and my bank manager’s new best friend.

A few weeks later I was handed a ridiculously fat cheque. So fat, in fact, that I was officially, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, the highest paid entertainer in the UK.

There it was for real, an actual cheque with my name on the top line and a figure of twenty odd million pounds underneath it. I remember taking the cheque to the pub with me for the next week. My accountant went spare, not in case I lost it, but because of the amount of interest I was losing out on every day.

Everyone was happy, how could they not be? SMG had got their hands on the media company everyone was talking about, my team and I had all become significantly wealthier – five of them became millionaires overnight – and not only that, we all still had our jobs and were being paid a small fortune to do them.

This, however, was also when I came across my first example of the difference between proper businessmen and a DJ who just got lucky.

‘We must give everyone a slice of the action,’ I announced gleefully.

‘What do you mean?’ asked one of my now former backers.

‘Well, how about every member of staff receives a bonus for, let’s say, ten per cent of their annual salary, except for my immediate on-air team, whom I propose should receive a whole twelve months extra pay,’ I suggested.

‘Good for you,’ said the same guy, ‘but we’ll be returning all of our profit back to our shareholders, every penny I’m afraid. Good luck, though, it sounds like you’re going to need it with ideas like that.’

‘But why?’ I remember thinking at the time. ‘Why would we not want to reward everyone involved in our success?’

Of course his view was that only a handful of us had taken any risk, whereas our staff had taken no risk whatsoever, remaining secure and decently paid throughout.

Even though I had to concede he was perfectly astute in his summing up of the situation, in the end I gave everyone a bonus anyway. It all came out of my share of the pot and I was more than happy to do so. The bill came close to

£800,000 but out of what I had made it was more like a graze than an open wound. In fact, it felt great. For me at the time, new money was like fresh butter; I thought it should be spread around whilst there was still plenty left and it tasted nice. Idiot. Nice idiot, but still an idiot.

Having done my own bit of spreading, a party was declared. A party which I think may also have gone on for several days, I’m not quite sure. But then again, I was about to become unsure about a lot of things.

TOP 10 DODGY DECISIONS I HAVE MADE

10 Buying 220 acres of land in Portugal for about £7 million with barely any planning permission for anything

9 Forming a new production company to make shows in which I had little or no interest

8 Producing other people generally

7 Agreeing to turn up to the Comedy Awards very much the worse for wear after being ‘found’ in a pub nearby

6 Donating £100,000 to Ken Livingstone’s mayoral campaign

5 Doubling it to £200,000 after Frank Dobson (Ken’s rival Labour candidate) criticised people for being ginger

4 Buying a Chelsea mansion because I was bored waiting for the pub to open

3 Withdrawing £300,000 in cash from the bank so I could pretend I had won on the horses, thus getting people to stay and have a drink with me

2 Taking the Scottish Media Group to court and losing comprehensively

1 Refusing to let a nice man from a big bank give me a cheque for £56 million

AS MY PART OF THE DEAL I had accepted forty per cent of the value of my old shares in cash, with the other sixty per cent being held as shares in the new company. These shares were to be released to me in three tranches of equal amounts over the next three years. After that it was up to me whether I sold them, kept them or lit fires with them.

Everyone at the time said I was mad to accept so much paper as opposed to real money, with the other main players in the deal negotiating a much higher percentage of cash payment for their equity.

‘Not so smart now, though,’ I thought a few days later, sitting in DC’s office watching the share price of the new company rocket from our sale price of £2.00 to a high of £3.76.

This meant that where I had been sitting on £30 million pounds’ worth of new equity at the point of sale I was now, just over a month later, sitting on a value of £56 million.

It was time for another conversation with Goldman Sachs, except now it was they who called me, shortly before dispatching a very nice man to come and visit me. He represented one of their investment funds.

‘Chris, we would like to offer you £3.76 per share for all your shares today,’ he said, sitting opposite me in an office I’d borrowed. ‘That, as I’m sure you know is £56 million,’ he went on. ‘What do you say?’

Well, to be honest I didn’t know what to say. I was already richer than I ever imagined I would be and these latest figures being tossed around were plain silly, but before I could even consider a decision, I had something to discuss with the nice gentleman on a point of clarification.

‘Er, I don’t actually have all the shares yet. I only receive them a third at a time over three years.’ Of course this was not news to him.

‘We are aware of that, Chris. What we are suggesting is that we buy them forward – that is to say we buy all your shares off you at an agreed price today, no matter when you get them. The price is firm.’

Now I have done many stupid things in my life but what I was about to do next is right up there at the top of the list. I suddenly convinced myself that there were dastardly goings on here, after all this was Goldman Sachs. Why were they so keen to totally buy me out and at such a premium?

‘Surely they must be up to something,’ I concluded to myself. ‘Why the hard sell?’

I tried to look intelligent for a second, tapping my fingers under my chin in a contemplative manner before declaring with gusto, ‘No thanks very much, I’m fine as I am. My shares are not for sale to you or anyone else.’ Upon hearing this, the nice gentleman from the big bank turned ashen. It was obvious to him I’d just lost my mind.

He tried to help me.

‘But Chris, do you realise how good a deal this is for you? It’s a guaranteed profit of almost one hundred per cent on the huge profit you’ve already made selling your company.’

But I was not to be moved. I was determined to turn down this second ‘offer of a lifetime’, no matter what. In fact the more he tried to reason with me, the more I became suspicious and convinced myself I was right.

By the time the nice man eventually gave up trying to give me £56 million for nothing more than a signature, he was incredulous.

In that one encounter I had become delusional. A fathead of seismic and cataclysmic proportions.

Whereas before I had understood my limitations when it came to business and accepted that thus far I had enjoyed no more than perhaps a highly fortuitous roll of the dice, I had now unwisely entered a state of mind where I presumed to actually know what I might be doing.

Mistakes don’t get much bigger than this.

The nice man from Goldman Sachs left the meeting shaking his head in disbelief. Over ten years later I’m still shaking mine. Excuse me for a moment whilst I just go outside to scream.

TOP 10 WAYS DRINKING TOO MUCH LEADS TO FOOLING YOURSELF

10 You pass off being scruffy for being eccentric

9 You pass off being drunk for being creative

8 You pass off being an angry pain in the ass for being misunderstood

7 You pass off not eating for being fit and lithe

6 You claim contentment is for the unambitious

5 You see responsibility as the badge of the dull

4 You mistake standing in a bar for hours on end talking shite for having a good time

3 You only have relationships with people based around alcohol

2 You are genuinely surprised when people disappear to go home

1 You think that anyone who goes to the pub all day, every day, may actually have something to offer the world

I MIGHT NOW HAVE UNWITTINGLY EMBARKED upon the most rudderless stage of my still relatively young life but at least I no longer owned the radio station, which suddenly felt more like a plus than a minus. After just over two years at the helm of a major business, a weight of which I had hitherto been unaware seemed to lift off my shoulders, leaving me instantly feeling lighter.

Gone for ever were the days when I needed to worry that we were spending too much money on new equipment or vastly expensive poster campaigns that seemed to have little or no effect. I could also forget about the fact that we were paying immense amounts of money to several very average broadcasters to do little more than tell the time and announce a competition every now and again.

In many ways I was freer than I had ever been before. I had all day every day after The Breakfast Show untouched, TFI was still flying and I was now perceived as a whizz in business (except of course by the people who really knew what business was about). And all this before I turned thirty-four.

So where does such a heady cocktail of success and opportunity leave a guy? Well, in my case it left me as high as a kite after coming off air every morning, in the middle of one of the most exciting cities in the world, with no more work to do and a truckload of disposable income burning a hole in my bank account.

It’s obvious now, when I look back at those days, that I was destined to go off the rails.

How about this for a clue?

Meticulous planning would go into my ‘recreational’ activities after the show each day and I convinced myself that in spite of these ‘plans’ I still had a hold on reality. But it was the almost frightening level of attention to detail that should have alerted me to the fact that there might be the beginnings of a larger problem here.

It was almost as if the producer in me had been enrolled by the devil to ruin my life as efficiently and comprehensively as possible.

I would begin my post-show programme of preparation for the day with a trip to the gym. Ironic, given what was to follow, but in my mind the fitter I was, the more unhealthy a lifestyle I could get away with. I would work out for all I was worth for an hour every day, followed by a forty-minute in-and-out sauna session, rounded off with a sleep in the relaxation room – it was a very posh gym.

The relaxation room was a big circular space lined with white leather recliners, all of which were arranged in semicircular rows facing a huge fish tank. There was suitably soft lighting and subtle, ambient music that seemed to come from nowhere and the room was dominated by a huge planetarium-style curved ceiling that came fully into view the instant you pushed back on your chair.

It wasn’t difficult to drift off in such a soporific atmosphere unless one of the larger club members had drifted off before you and had settled into a period of full-on, fat-neck snoring. This could be very debilitating when it came to trying to sleep, although it did raise a smile on the odd occasion when one of these chaps snored so loudly they woke themselves up with a jolt.

Snorers permitting, I used to have around an hour’s sleep in the relaxation room; very deep, very rejuvenating sleep, or at least that’s what I convinced myself it was – enough to last me for the rest of the day.

After the magic kip, I would jump under a cold shower, get dressed and I was all set. This routine made me feel brand new, come lunchtime and, regardless of what I may have been up to the night before, I was more than ready to go again.

See what I mean? While the rest of the world was at work every day, I was preparing myself to get perfectly wasted and slowly but surely dealing myself out of the game.

After leaving the gym, lunch would begin. I’d usually rope in a few pals for company and we would start with a cold beer before moving quickly on to the wine, white or red, it really didn’t matter.

A couple of glasses in and that protective alcohol-induced soft haze would descend slowly before my eyes like an invisible film, insulating me from the real world. As it took effect, smiles became bigger, conversation flowed more freely and the concept of time became almost non-existent.

This weird time factor was the most fascinating aspect of what alcohol used to do for me, or to me, if you like. The hands on the clock lost all meaning. It was this disconnection from reality that I enjoyed the most. I saw booze as my key to the ever-elusive philosophy of living in the moment. Living in the ‘now’, as they say in all those books and not having to worry about the before or the after. Simply focusing on being in the present, except of course – it’s not that simple.

I’m not excusing my drinking or trying to justify it, I’m merely trying to explain what it felt like. I remember taking various drinks on board, and waiting for these periods of cerebral protection to kick in. With the thought of this safety blanket wrapped around me I could look forward to forgetting about the growing muddle of things in life I didn’t understand – or perhaps more accurately, didn’t want to face. Within a couple of hours I knew I would be free.

This pattern of behaviour became almost pathological, no matter what was going on in the rest of my life, whether it was the afternoon or evening, raining or sunny. In fact I dread to think of the number of beautiful, God-given days I lost to the allure of booze.

I invented all kinds of rules to convince myself I was still in charge. If I could put off the start to my drinking until at least twelve hours after I had last stopped, then I would deem that a good day, a great day in fact, fooling myself into thinking I had attained some kind of control. Ridiculous, I know, but this was typical of the kind of justification I would cling to.

I also made another ‘rule’ that once I’d had a drink I would not talk about anything to do with business. Everyone knew that when I was out, I was out. They were more than welcome to come and join in, but all talk of work and anything to do with it was strictly off-limits.

With lunch over, the company would often dwindle as most people had jobs to get back to. This is when I would find myself hanging around with strangers while I waited to see who was coming out to play next. I’d put in a few calls to friends who might be up for a drink or two later, before heading off to the fifth-floor bar at Harvey Nicks in Knightsbridge – the perfect venue for an afternoon pick-me-up.

Harvey Nicks bar was always guaranteed to be in full swing by mid-afternoon with ladies taking what they believed to be a well-deserved half-time glass of fizz in a break from another credit-card-melting shopping spree. ‘God help their husbands,’ I used to think, as it was obvious that the vast majority of these wives, mistresses and whatever the others were, probably did little else with their days other than perhaps associated visits to the hairdresser, manicurist and other diversions that cost as much money as possible.

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