Music does the talking on Evans’ first radio show after Top Gear
ON the morning after his decision to leave Top Gear, Chris Evans let the music on his Radio 2 breakfast show say it all.
The presenter conceded that coverage about his exit from the BBC TV programme – after police confirmed he is being investigated over a historic sexual assault – was accurate.
He told listeners ‘it’s all true’ and dedicated yesterday’s show to ‘the Top Gear gang’. ‘Today’s show is entitled Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On,’ he said.
Evans then played a series of songs that seemed to suggest he has no regrets and intends to bounce back – including Aswad’s Don’t Turn Around, Free’s All Right Now, Sheryl Crow’s All I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun, and Walking On Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves.
The married broadcaster and father of three announced on Monday that he was quitting as host of the motoring show after just one series and disastrous ratings.
It came just hours after police confirmed they were investigating Evans over claims made by a woman about an alleged sexual assault in the Nineties. Weeks earlier, a former colleague claimed the 50-year-old had grabbed her breasts and exposed himself on a daily basis after she refused to sleep with him.
Evans denies the allegations and will continue to host his Radio 2 breakfast show – an indication that the BBC is standing by him.
Other tunes which appeared to relate to his feelings about the past few months included Erasure’s A Little Respect and the Eurthymics’ hit Thorn In My Side.
The lyrics of Del Amitri’s record Roll To Me also seemed to resonate with Evans’ position: ‘Look around your world…is it everything you’d hoped it’d be? The wrong guy, the wrong situation…’.
Another was 1980s track Just An Illusion by Imagination which includes the lines: ‘There’s another place another time … Never let your feelings get you down. Open up your eyes and look around, it’s just an illusion, illusion, illusion. Could it be that it’s just an illusion, putting me back in all this confusion?’
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said an allegation had been made relating to ‘Tower Hamlets in the 1990s’. This prompted speculation the alleged incident occurred at a location where Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast was filmed – Lock-keepers’ Cottage on Fish Island in the east London borough. Evans presented the show from 1992 to 1994.
He has previously admitted exposing himself during meetings of his company Ginger Media Group, saying in 2005: ‘I haven’t done it for a while, but I will do it again … If you get your willy out, it’s the funniest thing in the world.’
A BBC spokesman and a spokesman for Evans declined to comment. He has called recent claims of bullying on Top Gear a ‘witch-hunt’.