Curious rise of the man who knows everyone
As he joins X Factor despite plunging ratings for his Radio 1 show ...
HIS UNVEILING as a host on The X Factor this week was the ultimate triumph of style over substance.
He has never made a record, never signed an act nor produced a song. Yet Nick Grimshaw, the Radio 1 breakfast show host, was paraded alongside chart toppers Rita Ora and Cheryl Fernandez-Versini as if he were the second coming.
Shirt slashed to the navel, hairy chest competing for attention against suspiciously white teeth, he looked like a younger, thinner version of the man who has just hired him.
Yet while Simon Cowell, for all his sins, has proved himself beyond doubt as a genuine hitmaker, Grimshaw’s main achievement so far this year is to propel his radio show’s ratings to a record decline.
It was enough to prompt Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper to make a rare public announcement last month. ‘I’m pleased that Grimmy is doing what I’ve asked of him by keeping his young audience happy and scaring off the over-30s,’ he said.
Yet Grimshaw’s ‘ record’, let us be clear, was to achieve a new low for Radio 1’s breakfast show listeners in 12 years. Indeed, since taking over the breakfast show from Chris Moyles in 2012 he’s somehow persuaded one in five listeners to switch off, yet he is being praised for attracting ‘yoof’.
Who cares how many people are tuning in when you are the most achingly trendy man in the land? Who needs ratings when your best mates are pop star Harry Styles, models Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne, pop star Taylor Swift and It Girl Alexa Chung? With style like this, who needs substance?
Never mind turning water into wine, how many people could turn such failure into cold, hard cash? Witness the fat contract offered him by Cowell, who views Grimshaw as the saviour of his ailing X Factor empire.
Details are sketchy, but it is understood the DJ will be allowed to juggle his jobs and more than double his six-figure Radio 1 salary for joining Cheryl and Rita on the judging panel.
Not bad for a working- class lad from Oldham with no discernible talent. Even completing a Media Studies degree proved beyond him.
SO HOW has he pulled it off? Well, Grimshaw is a world- class networker. Peerless, in fact. There is barely a famous name under 40 in Britain he has not personally flattered and taken into his confidence.
The result is a little black book for which the showbiz kingpins would give their right arm in this celebrity-obsessed age, aiding his easy ascent of the greasy pole.
This knack for befriending the famous has bewitched broadcasting executives who spend most of their careers chasing the elusive interviews Grimshaw secures with ease.
His friend Aimee Phillips remembers his early BBC career in 2008, when he filled Radio 1’s late evening slot from 10pm to midnight.
‘People like Harry Styles would just turn up alone at 11pm to do the show,’ says Phillips, Grimshaw’s co-writer on the BBC3 quiz show Sweat The Small Stuff. ‘It ended up with everyone saying: “Why haven’t you asked me on?” ’
To have the most lusted after member of One Direction, the biggest musical act on the planet, wandering into the studio is radio gold. But for Grimshaw, who made a point of befriending Styles when he was an 18-year-old hopeful, such stunts are not hard to pull off.
But famous friends do not necessarily translate into an eager audience: Grimshaw haemorrhaged one million listeners in his first six months. Ominously for Cowell, there are plenty of signs that people are tiring of Grimshaw’s show-off schtick, the parading of his pals and even his choice of music and interviews. Facebook groups are campaigning to banish him from the airwaves.
Some media analysts question whether Grimshaw actually understands his target audience — fickle youngsters who are listening less to radio and spending more time staring at YouTube, social media and video games. He is 30, out of the target age for his own show.
The awkward reality is that young listener numbers have fallen by 320,000 compared to the same time last year. ‘Grimshaw is under huge pressure to drag them back with his supposed popularity,’ says one analyst. ‘Evidence suggests he is failing to do so.’
A recent poll by website Digital Spy, which involved more than 15,000 people, revealed that 75 per cent did not want to see him join The X Factor. He was also on the receiving end of a huge backlash from TFI Friday viewers when Chris Evans suggested Grimshaw could replace him as host.
Grimshaw does worry about how the public perceives him, and he dislikes being alone. Yet his hectic social life has perhaps made it more difficult for him to find lasting love.
Since coming out as gay in 2012, he has had only one meaningful relationship, with the Italian designer Nicco Torelli, and that was almost two years ago. Recently, he pledged to be in bed by 9.30pm most nights, claiming he does not actually go out on the town very often: ‘It’s just whenever I go out, I always get caught.’
Last month, he flew to Turkey with pals including It Girls Pixie Geldof and Daisy Lowe for the opening of a private members’ club.
After posting endless images of his gang partying and smoking shisha pipes, Grimshaw returned to London having lost his voice and was unable to work on Monday morning.
His BBC paymasters, for all their forbearance, were not impressed.
But they have been generous. While his salary is secret, company accounts for his firm Grimepool Ltd show that in the year after he took over from Moyles, his assets swelled by £350,000.
Born in Manchester’s gritty Moss Side district, Grimshaw grew up in Oldham in a chatty but unassuming family to whom he remains extremely close.
His father, Peter, is a marketing executive and his mother, Eileen, a former insurance broker. The baby of the family — his brother and sister are more than ten years older — Grimshaw is fond of recounting how he had to develop a zany personality to get noticed.
His siblings have cheekily rechristened their wealthy brother MCG, ‘Middle Class Git’.
After achieving respectable grades at his local Roman Catholic school, he dropped out of Liverpool University in his final year to head for London and work experience stints on radio and TV stations.
ALMOST immediately, he struck up a close friendship with fashion designer Henry Holland and supermodel du jour Agyness Deyn, Mancunian refugees who recognised a kindred spirit.
The trio inveigled their way into the Primrose Hill Set, presided over by Kate Moss and her friend Sadie Frost. Grimshaw’s cheeky charm so beguiled Frost that she asked him to be godfather to her youngest son, Rudy.
Through his new contacts, he won his first break. At 22, Grimshaw was hired as a presenter on entertainment channel E4. The following year, he moved to Channel 4 to front youth- targeted shows Freshly Squeezed and T4, with Alexa Chung. Two qualities stood out. First, work did not end when the cameras stopped rolling, with Grimshaw making sure he went out socialising with his new-found famous friends. Second, he remained true to himself, which his old friends say has been key to his success.
His celebrity friends praise his trustworthiness. ‘He’s the most loyal person I know,’ says his former T4 presenting colleague Miquita Oliver. ‘You can tell him anything, it will never get out.’
But with a question mark hanging over his radio career, The X Factor gig could provide him with a get-out.
It is understood that Kate Moss, a friend of Cowell’s, put in a good word. Meanwhile, Cowell has identified Grimshaw as the man to bring a degree of rock ’ n’ roll credibility, which the show has been lacking, amid falling ratings.
It could prove to be Cowell’s smartest move in some time.
Then again, should the old magic fail to do the business, Grimmy may find himself out of not just one job, but both of them.