Call the Midlife
Authors: Chris Evans
Call the Midlife
TFI Friday
vs
Top Gear
and Other Middle-Aged Dilemmas
CHRIS EVANS
To all the mums in the world – but especially my own, and Eli’s, Noah’s and Jade’s.
Contents
My Early Stab at the Male Menopause
Making Programmes: What I Love
TV takes for ever … and ever … and ever. (Hiten Vora)
BBC Music Day. Alex, Jamie Cullum and me. It was much colder than it looks. (BBC)
Jackpot! Joanna Lumley and my
One Show
co-presenter Alex Jones. (Tom Fenner)
Me doing my impression as Fearne Cotton’s dad. (BBC / Guy Levy)
Finishing line with
that
medal. The smile lasted for weeks. (Virgin Money London Marathon)
Celebrating at the finish with Tash, Eli and Noah. Pizza and ice-cream only minutes away.
With my wonderful assistant Hiten, the Frothy Coffee Man. (Hiten Vora)
Fiat 500 – the New Way Forward. (Hiten Vora)
There’s the silver screen, the small screen and then there’s the green screen. (Hiten Vora)
The man with the blue guitar. (BBC)
Moo-ve over, Tom Daley. (Jeff Spicer / Alpha Press)
Adam Waddell, Mr
Top Gear
Worldwide, obviously thrilled at my appointment. (Rowan Horncastle)
Jay Hunt, the no-nonsense straight-talking head of Channel 4. (Channel 4 / Adam Lawrence)
Me and Clarkson, two weeks before I was offered his old job – the last time we spoke. (BBC)
First day at Big School equals Big Everything.
Children in Need golf day. Nine years and counting . . . (Dusan Bozic)
A serious side to the little one. I like it.
The Chinese word for crisis is the same as their word for opportunity. There is no better example of positive thinking than this.
Bollocks. Bollocks. Bollocks.
I’ve always wanted to write one of those crystal ball works of fiction that ends up coming true. You know, the ones that make the author look like some kind of prophetic supernatural genius.
And you know what? I was almost there with this book. But then the something I was going to predict might happen after it was published, happened two weeks before I was due to hand in the final manuscript.
Basically I decided I wanted to write a book about turning fifty and the twelve months leading up to whatever that’s like and whatever that ends up meaning. This would involve me taking the time to assess where I was at the beginning of that twelve-month period, where I would like to be in, say, ten, fifteen or even twenty years’ time, and how I might go about setting off in the right direction to give myself the best chance of succeeding.
It would also have to include detailed and brutally honest self-analysis in certain aspects of my life, training for and competing in the London Marathon IN SECRET, resurrecting my cult Nineties television show
TFI Friday
for a ninety-minute one-off special, plus one other thing that I always swore I would never do.
However, in the final week of preparation for
TFI Friday
, in fact only the day before the show was due to be broadcast live, I received a text that may have changed my life for ever. Certainly for the next three years. It was a text, completely out of the blue, from the Head of Entertainment at BBC Television asking me if I would like to take over
Top Gear
.
That’s
Top Gear
, my favourite television show of all time.
The text pinged up on the screen of my battered old BlackBerry
at 4.07 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon. It was a question I never even dreamt I would be asked. After Jeremy’s shock departure, I honestly thought ‘the slow one’ and ‘the short one’ would carry on without him. That’s what I wanted to happen. That’s what everyone I knew who was a a fan of
Top Gear
wanted to happen. And that’s what seemed like the most likely scenario right up until the death. When at the last minute James and Richard informed the BBC that they had decided to take their chances instead and stick with Jeremy. The Three Amigos off in search of a mega-bucks deal with a rival television network.
What happened in the following seventy-two hours was a whirlwind.
Never in a million years did I think
TFI Friday
’s revival would have, could have, been the triumph it turned out to be. And never in a trillion years did I imagine I would end up sitting outside a pub three days later watching my phone go into meltdown as the news of my
Top Gear
appointment was posted to an unsuspecting world on Twitter.
Nor did I imagine that I would end up in a legal tug-of-war between Channel Four and the BBC which resulted in me writing, producing and presenting both
TFI Friday
and
Top Gear
as well as hosting my daily radio show on Radio 2.
None of the above was in any of my reckoning.
There is no doubt in my mind that writing this book focused me like I have never been focused before. Subconsciously I was gradually positioning myself to be ready for what I sincerely believed was the beginning of the most exciting decade of my life so far. Albeit not quite as immediately as it turned out to be.
But out of everything I did, it’s the marathon that had most effect. Training to shuffle around the streets of the capital on that damp, overcast Sunday morning at the end of April 2015 made me realize that huge undertakings are all about preparation, preparation, preparation.
To free up the time and space required for such commitment meant I had no choice but to declutter my life of the distractions
and nonsense that I’d allowed to build up around me. Training for a marathon, especially if you’ve never done it before, is the definitive SuperSorter. The ultimate masterclass in how to formulate a strategy, employ the right tactics and execute the plan to achieve one’s goal.
The rules are simple: if you commit to the weekly regime – you will make it round; if you commit to most of the weekly regime but not all – you will make it round; if you commit to half the weekly regime – you will still probably make it round . . . but anything less and you might as well not bother.
As well as the basic training involving a variety of runs – long, short, recovery, hills, fast, marathon pace, tempo and gentle slow jogs – proper consideration to sleep, complementary cross-training, the right gear and, most important of all, the correct nutrition and hydration is also mandatory. All of which being vital on the day taught me a lesson I will never forget.
When you stack the cards so much in your favour off the field, it’s almost impossible not to pull off a victory on the field. This is how battles are won.
Completing a marathon also changes other people’s perception of you way beyond anything you might allow yourself to imagine. Everyone instinctively knows that running 26.2 miles from never having really run at all requires immense dedication and determination. They can see that you look and feel different, that you’ve become much stronger, both physically and mentally; they can sense that your capacity to cope with and therefore enjoy life has become probably more infectious.
I ended up feeling more like the person I hoped I always was but feared I may have lost touch with forever.
If you have never run a marathon you really absolutely, definitely must. Walk one, or hop one, or wheelchair one; whatever way you can, just do it. The whole experience will leave you no choice but to prioritize what is important in your life. It will give you a reason and a deadline, the two things all human beings need to do ANYTHING.
