“I take fun really seriously,” says Radio 1’s Greg James, cheerily ducking his 6ft 4 inch frame beneath the beams of a 15th-century London pub. His shaggy curls are wet from cycling through a downpour and his 2pm order – shot of espresso, half a Guinness – is perfectly on brand. Naughty, but moderate. I imagine he also needs a little pick-me-up, rising at 5am each weekday to ring lead three hours of “communal silliness” on the 7-10am Breakfast Show he’s been hosting since 2018.
At 39, James is now a decade older than listeners at the upper end of Radio 1’s 15-29 year old target demographic. But he has the perfect balance of boyish energy and comforting responsibility for the slot – and, as he says, “I still absolutely love doing it. After the pandemic I thought, ‘Maybe that is enough.’ Then I found an extra gear.”
The radio landscape has changed a little since he started. He was hired by the BBC to present the pre-dawn Early Breakfast Show straight out of University in 2007. “Back then, the idea of somebody being 40 on the breakfast show was” – he makes an ick face – “not cool. There was weirdly more of an age culture war back then. Now I joke about ‘pensioning off’ listeners to ‘the old people’s home’ at Radio 2 but, really, I think Radio 1 can bring generations together. I think people in their forties or fifties today are still interested in new music, new films and big TV shows in a way that maybe older generations weren’t before. I am still interested!”
Working out what you love and doing more of it is the main theme of James’ new book: All the Best for the Future. “It’s not really a memoir,” he says. It’s more the story of how the DJ learned, in his 30s, to reclaim the playful spirit of his inner “excited, joyful, naive kid” and find “more time for play”. He wants to help readers do the same.
It was only in the writing of the book that James – born in south London, the second child of two teachers – came to realise he was “quite an anxious child”. In some ways he’s relieved about this as he says “confident 12-year-olds tend to be unbearable p***ks”.
These days, James “isn’t shy anymore” – although he is “much more confident behind the mic, on a stage, than I can be in a small group of strangers”.
James first began his radio career on hospital radio aged 14, where he later found out that none of his shows were actually broadcast. But things took off in earnest for the “radio nerd” while he was studying English and Drama at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, winning Best Male Presenter at the Student Radio Awards 2005.
After graduation, 21-year-old James was offered an £18,000-a-year job on Birmingham’s Galaxy radio, but held out for Radio 1 where, two months later, he was offered the £80,000 Early Breakfast slot. He was on holiday with his family in France when he got the call. “I cried,” he says. After a hug and dance, he took the family’s hire car out alone to drive around the countryside with Maximo Park’s “Apply Some Pressure” on repeat, coming to terms with being “the happiest I had ever felt”.
James doesn’t squirm when I point out that some readers might struggle to take advice on happiness from a white, middle-class bloke whose first job paid more than double the then-average national salary (£30,000) – and who now makes over £425,000 “messing about, playing pranks, and talking to pop stars”. Instead, he leans in and nods earnestly. He’s painfully aware of his privilege, but “if anything,” he says, “that makes me MORE qualified.” Only somebody with fame and money – who meets people with loads more of both on a daily basis – can tell you those things don’t spark the enduring joy you can get from eating cheese or waving at fire engines. “I get up every day thinking about what cheers people up.”
Around 4.1 million people choose to start their day with James, so he must be doing something right. He stresses the magic of “spontaneity”. He points out that some of his best shows have been “derailed in a fun way” by his listeners – like the time a listener inspired them to scrap regular programming in order to hold a vote on which UK celebrities should be sent to space. (Back when Katy Perry went on Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origins rocket). “People picked Alison Hammond, Denise Welsh, Natalie Cassidy, Gemma Collins and they all said yes. We Got Carol Vorderman on the phone. Richard Branson got in touch to say: ‘I’ll fly it.’ The listeners named it ‘Airforce Hun.’”
James gets giddy at the memory. “You just can’t do that sort of thing on telly. You can’t do it on a podcast. It’s unique to a station like ours.” It’s also unique to a small country like ours? “British people have great comedy bones.”
Has James ever worried about getting the tone right? “Yes, during the pandemic.” He was just two years into presenting the Breakfast Show. “I thought: can there be a ‘whacky happy’ response to THIS? People were at home, furloughed, ill, scared, lonely, but we realised radio can be there for you in a crisis.” In retrospect, he says, “that was the making of the show we have now.”
He believes shows like his can help unite citizens of our divided culture. “People are sad and confused and disenfranchised. It’s easy to say, ‘Let’s blame this group and that group.’” He believes his daft quizzes and animal stories (like those he told about the tall duck at the University of York, which led to him getting a daft honorary doctorate from the place) can offer “common ground” and help us “chill the f**k out”.
He also believes that there’s nothing more unifying than agreeing on something trivial you hate. The first chapter he wrote for his book is about his refusal to attend long drawn-out weddings abroad. In fact, James publishes a long list of things he hates – “nemeses” – in his book. They include: Dubai, wind, people who are not farmers and wear gilets, and Alan Sugar.
On a less trivial matter, he is also sick of being asked why he and Mackie (to whom he has been married for seven years) don’t have children. “Don’t ever be a f**king busybody and ask questions prying into whether someone is having kids,” he writes in the book. “It might be a choice, and it might be a private struggle.” Mackie miscarried a few years ago after conceiving accidentally, and it shocked them into thinking properly about whether they wanted “another person in our lives forever”. They thought hard about it and found the answer was a “resounding no”.
Today, James simply eyerolls those who ask him if he “regrets” that choice, and plays it safer with his ranting, laying into utilities companies and the entitled attitudes of some of his celebrity guests.
“They can be boring, can’t they, the movie stars? Quite hard work,” he sighs, next putting on a posh thespy voice in parody. “The ones who talk about a ‘body of work’, eugh!” He’s also got no time for celebs whining about jet lag. “Shut up. It’s 7am. Everyone listening is knackered and you’re a millionaire, so you’re not allowed to be tired. I am not allowed to be tired. That’s the job: cheer everyone up! Sell this film you’ve been paid two million quid to be in. It’s not MY job to sell your s**t film!”
James is funny about his own fame. He says he lives in a “normal house in north London, goes to Tesco, puts the bins out, walks the dog”. But admits Mackie’s family (her dad is former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger) “take the piss out of me for living in a ‘minor celebrity bubble’ that means I get special treatment in small ways.” Such as? “On a train I might get bumped up to Standard Premiere. In a restaurant: complimentary limoncello. I get late checkouts in hotels…” Mackie argues this skews James’ worldview to make him think “people are nicer and happier” than they really are. “She says: ‘You know this isn’t normal, right?’” He shrugs.
James is wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan: “A Complicated Man” (it’s a reference to the album A Complicated Woman by one of his favourite artists, Self Esteem). But he thinks we over complicate ourselves to our detriment. Today, he jokes that I’m trying to get him cancelled by asking if he has a dark side. Apparently Elizabeth Day asked him the same question on her podcast, How To Fail, in 2023. “I told her: ‘I’m not telling you about that. I might tell a therapist that!”
“Truth is, I don’t think I have a mask,” he says now. “I think this is who I am. You can’t hide on the radio for very long. You can’t pretend you’re enjoying it for three hours of live broadcasting a day… or at least I couldn’t.”
‘All the Best for the Future‘ (Ebury, £22) is out now
