Eddy Says

Eddy says: One lion

By Eddy Temple-Morris | Published on Monday 7 February 2011

It’s Tinnitus Awareness Week, but I know you’re all aware, so this piece has nothing whatsoever to do with tinnitus, more with a certain strawberry birth mark, that in medieval times may have been frowned upon as the mark of the devil, but now should be the indisputable sign of genius.

But before that, two very quick TAW things – remember that if you weren’t able to come down to Quo Vadis in Soho today, there’s still the opportunity to get yourself some proper, professional earplugs at a special discount – check out last week’s Eddy Says for more details. Also, I’ll be blogging at the British Tinnitus Association website all this week.

But now, on with this week’s fireside tale from your Uncle Ted…

My first proper job in showbiz, if you don’t count being in a band, was at Radio 1 in the mid-90s. There’s another Eddy Says about this, just waiting to get out of my brain, but this time I want to focus on by far the most brilliant man I got to work with during my two and a half year stint at Auntie Beeb’s pride and joy of youth media culture.

I was reminded of this man when I saw ‘Four Lions’ for the first time the other day. Many of you know that my friend and colleague Riz Ahmed, or Riz MC, the brilliant solo artist and sometime Loser, stars in this much talked about British film. But I’d heard mixed reports, so my expectations had lowered over time, amidst the reams of press that I avidly digested around the time of release. But now I’ve seen it for myself I’m convinced this is one of the most important British films ever made, and my hero-worship of its director, Chris Morris, continues; bolstered, even, by this exquisite black comedy. And it is Morris, you see, who is the brillaint man of which I speak.

So, rewind to 1994 or thereabouts, and my arrival at the nation’s (then) favourite radio station at a time when it was struggling. It was a time of massive flux for the station, the old guard of Simon Bates, Dave Lee Travis and Steve Wright had either just been fired, or were just about to be fired and were in that awful position of knowing their days were seriously numbered.

Incoming were interesting new blood: Jo Whiley, Steve Lamacq, Danny Rampling, Lisa I’Anson, Westwood, etc.

At the time, Radio 1 had a comedy strand each weekday evening, presented by a different comedian or writer each time. Stewart Lee and Richard Herring did one, Radio Tip Top did their wonderful British Technicolor thing, Andrew Collins and Stuart Maconie did another, but the best one, by a country mile, was Chris Morris.

The week I joined, Chris announced, via his show, that Michael Heseltine had died. This didn’t go down to well with Heseltine’s family, or with the besieged controller of Radio 1, because, of course, the prominent Tory front bencher was still very much alive.

Heseltine’s lawyers dealt with, Chris promptly announced the death of Jimmy Saville. This sent the press into a furore, and the boss had to put a helmet on and dig in. But still, Chris was allowed on air, much to the credit of Matthew Bannister, the inspirational controller at the time, and the man solely responsible for the modern innovative Radio 1 we know – or, rather, don’t know – today.

Then came the Chris Morris Christmas Special. I couldn’t wait to see what he was going to do, and hoped it would be, at the very least, sacrilegious, iconoclastic and extremely offensive to Christians. I was not let down, as, on Christmas Day as I recall, Chris announced that it had been discovered and scientifically proven than Jesus was gay. This masterstroke spelt the beginning of the end, and he was never allowed to broadcast his show live or unchecked again.

Chris’s Radio 1 programme remains probably my favourite radio show ever. He had a ‘stooge’ at the time, a lovely guy called Paul Garner, whom he’d send on errands. He’d send him into the street and call him, live to air (or to tape), and get him to either do or say random things to members of the public. Paul would, like some kind of programmed robot, do whatever Chris commanded, however ludicrous, and it really descended into utter and delightful lunacy sometimes.

But that wasn’t my favourite ‘Paul prank’. The best one was this: Paul would go to a London airport and wait for a flight from somewhere really random, like Cameroon, then pretend to be a cab driver picking up some foreign gent with an odd name. Of course, he’d work rude words and phrases into the name, and then record the Tannoy system as airport staff put out calls for his fictional passengers.

He got so good at it, that after the using up the more obvious schoolboy humour type names (would Mr Hugh Jarse, or Mike Hunt, please come to airport information) he built up, over weeks and weeks, to getting these unsuspecting airport serfs to say stuff like: “My colleague just farted and left the room, the bastard” and: “So, I got my own back and took a piss in his tea”. They actually said it, here’s the audio, as a delightful reminder for some and a revelation to others.

Chris was also adept at taking audio and cutting speech up to make people say something completely different from what they’d originally said. He’d interview the likes of Phil Collins, with a pre-prepared ‘liner script’, so Phil thought he was doing station liners, for jingles, and then chop around key phrases like “across the country on 97-99FM” so that Phil would end up saying: “Hi, I’m Phil Collins and I think Bruno Brookes is a cunt”.

Chris came loping into my office one morning, as he frequently did, to ask me to do something for his show, which had so much content for just one hour. He is a tall man, and buzzes like a fridge, but with creative energy. I’ve not seen him since his Radio 1 days, but he used to be almost on fire, perpetually, with ideas and schemes, his eyes twinkling with impish naughtiness. He had a huge strawberry birthmark on his face, but somehow he rocked it, and I didn’t feel uncomfortable in that ‘don’t look at the birthmark’ way.

“Eddy Eddy Eddy…” he rasped, always in a hurry. “Arnold Schwarzenegger is doing a press junket and I need to get him”.

“Oh yeah?” I replied, knowing exactly what his game was. “What do you actually want him to say?”

“Hmmm”, he thought, for no longer than a second. “Hi, I’m Arnold Schwarzenegger and I like to piss on baby mice then shove them up my arse”.

“Fuck me! That won’t be easy!”

“I know, but I really need him on this show. It’s fucking Arnold Schwarzenegger – imagine it! Can you do it? I’m too busy, can you write me a script that’ll work?”

I’d become good at editing and knew exactly what to do. Even though, strictly speaking, it wasn’t my responsibility, I took it upon myself to come up with the script he needed. I had to write a succinct, believable paragraph that Arnie would say, in the long line of interviews and liners he’d do that day, in which lurked words and phrases which could then be nipped and cut, and put together to form other words.

The word ‘myself’ could be chopped for ‘mice’, and a sentence like “when push comes to shove, I like Radio 1 more than my own baby”, for example, could feasibly get under Arnie’s PR’s radar.

I can’t remember exactly what I wrote but I did it, and duly handed it over to Chris. Sadly Arnie cancelled the junket due to ill health, so we never got him, but I’m chuffed as hell to know that if that had gone ahead, we’d have a clear and concise ‘quote’ from the biggest actor in the world at the time, professing a love for urinating on immature rodents then inserting them into his rectal passage.

I met some real characters at Radio 1 in the next couple of years, before MTV ‘discovered’ me. But the one I remember as the most brilliant, in the true sense of the word, was that man, Chris Morris. It was as if he glowed. He was ferociously intelligent yet savagely irreverent, a quality I admire greatly in people, especially ones within big institutions. I’ll probably never meet him again, but will remain in awe of the man for the rest of my days.

Sometimes the funniest things – the things that I laugh the hardest and loudest about – aren’t, on the surface of things, all that funny. Often they’re things you’re not supposed to laugh at. Chris taught me that, and I shall remain ever grateful.

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