Who broke Britain? Welcome to The i Paper’s opinion series in which experts and writers debate the issues that concern them about modern Britain.
• Martin Lewis: the money-saving expert… who accidentally cost Britons billions• The American woman who ripped the heart out of Cadbury• The beer ‘punk’ who became a British hate figure
The soundtrack to the 90s was “Wake Up, Boo!” by the Boo Radleys, a glorious, up-tempo song that only just scraped into the top 10. But it was given staying power by a repurposed version being used as a jingle on Chris Evans’s Radio 1 breakfast show, which launched around the same time. Such was Evans’s influence at the time.
In days when most TV viewers had a choice of four channels, and digital radio was in its infancy, Evans was virtually unavoidable. He championed bands and singers he liked; his ebullient and chaotic sense of humour was infectious; he didn’t look typically cool, but he so plainly was cool that his ascent made it feel that anyone could do anything through force of nature alone.
But forces of nature tend to cause damage. Evans and his antics – fuelled often by heavy drinking – ended up symbolising an early 21st century decline that Britain is still coming to terms with. He nearly broke himself in the process.
