Radio DJ Greg James has revealed how Chris Moyles mocked him as the ‘posh student’ when he first arrived at the BBC as a fresh-faced 21-year-old, with “fantastic, flowing indie hair”. Greg landed the coveted early breakfast slot on BBC Radio 1 in 2007 on an £80,000 salary, leading into Moyles’s hugely successful eponymous breakfast show at the height of its popularity.
But the Hertfordshire-born presenter, whose parents were both teachers, admitted he was stunned to be branded ‘posh’ by the outspoken Yorkshire DJ.
Writing in his memoir All the Best for the Future, now out in paperback, the 40-year-old recalled: ‘Imagine my surprise when I turned up at Radio 1 and was thrust into the incredible daytime line-up to do the Early Breakfast Show before Chris Moyles every day, only for him to start calling me “the posh student”.
View 4 ImagesGreg started at the BBC in 2007(Image: Daily Mirror)
‘I really wasn’t expecting that. I don’t help myself with the cricket thing, but it felt reductive to be called that.’ Greg said Moyles quickly formed an opinion of him as an eager young broadcaster from the Home Counties with little life experience.
He wrote: “Moyles didn’t know anything about me. He had no idea what my upbringing was like. He saw what he thought was a nice, excited, slightly boring 21-year-old from the Home Counties with fantastic flowing indie hair who he could wind up a bit because I was new and just very happy to be there.
“But I’d also managed to make my way to the best radio station in the world at a madly competitive time.”
Despite their early clashes, Greg said the on-air sparring ultimately helped prepare him for the brutal realities of the broadcasting industry. “Eventually we had quite a funny on-air relationship where we’d take the p*** out of each other,” he wrote.
4View 4 ImagesChris left the BBC in 2012 but is still BBC Radio 1’s longest-serving breakfast presenter(Image: James Gourley/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
4View 4 ImagesGreg has been at the BBC for almost two decades (Image: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock)
“I guess I was just bog-standard middle class and that wasn’t interesting to him. I had to prove myself and also start working out who I was. So I’m grateful for the baptism of fire.”
Greg, who succeeded Nick Grimshaw as Radio 1 Breakfast host in 2018, also paid tribute to former station star Scott Mills, describing him as one of his broadcasting heroes during his university years.
“I’d wake up extra early just to listen to the last bit of Scott’s show before I had to get ready,” he wrote. “He was consistently funny, daring and so creative. I loved the games, the features and the spontaneity of it. It was so, so good.”
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Mills was removed from the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show earlier this year following allegations relating to his personal conduct.
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