Nick Grimshaw sometimes turned up half-cut to host the Radio 1 Breakfast show, along with a “straight-through crew” of friends, colleagues and celebrities who had been out all night. “But I was never late in six years,” he protests of his stint between 2012 and 2018, when he was in his late twenties and early thirties. “I always thought it was fine to be hungover on the radio, if it was culturally relevant.”
That meant he would turn up the worse for wear after Glastonbury, the NME awards or the Brits — events his listeners would be talking about. “Professional reasons for hangovers,” he says with a grin. He would invite stars like Stormzy and Rita Ora to the studio. “Sometimes it made the show funnier.” Once, his entire crew overslept. “And sometimes it was terrible.”
Presenting to the nation is a balancing act. Listeners have routines: school run, work, chores. I think Grimshaw managed that balance well; he was audibly excited to be on air and Radio 1 is all about escapism. But do listeners really want to spend their mornings hearing how hedonistic the host’s life is? Grimshaw points out that Sara Cox and Chris Evans did similar. “And I never felt left out while listening on my way to school in Oldham,” he says. “I felt they were doing me a service.”
Grimshaw is 40 now, settled down and living with his boyfriend, Misha, and the only reason to drag up his past is to set up a more sedate future. Because this week, in what can only be described as an age-appropriate move, Grimshaw will start hosting the breakfast show on BBC Radio 6 Music.
“It’s not all-nighters from the Brits but all-nighters from James Blake in a church,” he quips. He’s changed too: less booze, more water, more sleep. He looks good, his eyes sparkling — still with a mess of hair, but otherwise serene. But in one key way Grimshaw is still the same man who moved to London 20 years ago. Then he just wanted to connect with people through music and that has not changed.
Grimshaw was born in Oldham in 1984, the youngest of three. He always wanted to do something with music and Manchester was full of it: the Haçienda, the Stone Roses. His brother Andy moved next door to Noel Gallagher (they still text). At age ten Grimshaw wanted to be in a band, but only played the trumpet “terribly” and had a “horrible” voice. School, though, was “Bs or Cs” and so music it had to be, in some form.
He loved radio, but working in it felt like an impossible ambition. “Saying you wanted to work at Radio 1, while growing up in Oldham, felt like reaching for the stars,” he says. He mentions Leanne — his brother’s girlfriend, later his sister-in-law — who seemed exotic because she made the family “stuffed vine leaves for tea” and who changed his life. “She said people are footballers and astronauts and that is definitely harder than being a DJ — you can do it.”
That was that. It gave him self-belief and Grimshaw moved to London. When he was 23 he joined the BBC’s youth strand, Switch, with Annie Mac; the pair now host a pop-culture podcast called Sidetracked with Annie and Nick.
What did his parents think? “My dad shouted at me for wasting my time listening to music,” Grimshaw recalls of his teens. Did he think DJing wasn’t a proper job? “Yes — even when I did Sunday nights on Radio 1. That was a bit stupid, though. We were making N-Dubz put their faces in a bowl of custard.”
His father, Peter, died in 2016. Did he ever realise that his son had done well? Grimshaw grins. “When I did student radio because I was failing my degree, he thought I’d lost my mind. Then I worked at MTV in the international creative department and my dad — a working-class man from Manchester, born in the 1940s — said, ‘What the f*** is that?’ When I did E4 music, he was still sceptical. But when I got into the BBC, he said, ‘I’ve heard of that.’ The BBC legitimises this for mums and dads.”
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Peter would love him on 6 Music; frankly, it’s more parent-friendly. Grimshaw has been on and off the station for a bit already, recently covering Lauren Laverne when she took time off for cancer treatment. “That was a sensitive cover,” he says. “They didn’t want to put pressure on her.” Now Laverne has had the all-clear and shifted to mid-morning, with Grimshaw full-time on the morning shift.
“I like the spirit that 6 Music has,” Grimshaw says, buzzing about his new home. “The listeners are curious. You can have guests who aren’t famous because you’re not scrambling for viral content. Not saying, ‘Quick — what’s Beyoncé said on Twitter?’ You can speak to Vivian Goldman and Es Devlin.I love finding out of a morning why A4 paper is that size.”
Then there is the music, the reason most people listen to 6. What is a typical song on his playlist? “Definitely beyond the mainstream, but any age, any genre.” Grimshaw thinks of his brother, back in the day, as the archetypal 6 Music listener. He loved the Fall, Echo & the Bunnymen and Joy Division, but also De La Soul and Public Enemy. He enjoyed Madonna and George Michael and was, in a way, a typical streamer before streaming existed.
Now that the past and present of pop is available at the click of a button, 6 Music is a valuable curator, steering listeners to the prime cuts. Grimshaw proudly says commercial radio plays, on average, 3,000 different songs a year — 6 Music does 20-25,000.
Then he is off on a tangent (Grimshaw is great at the basics of linked chat, an essential skill for DJs). He bemoans the turn of the millennium, when he got a Toploader CD and took it back to the shop to swap it for Carlos Santana. This is what streaming has solved: nobody needs to buy Toploader any more.
“I hate streaming in a way,” Grimshaw says. “Because I loved — not to sound 100 years old — going to a record shop. But I also love that streaming means that kids can have Kate Bush chat.”
His period at Radio 1 came at a strange time, when listeners were discovering YouTube and the BBC was figuring out what to do. Grimshaw shed the listeners his predecessor, Chris Moyles, had racked up. A year after starting, the breakfast show had lost a million fans. How did that feel?
“It was hard. But weirdly that was the intention — which sounds made-up but it’s not. The intention of Big Boss Ben [Cooper, the former controller of Radio 1] was to lose listeners. They wanted it to be dramatically younger.”
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So listeners would move away to the more grown-up BBC stations? Grimshaw nods. “Ben was under pressure to make Radio 1 its youth brand — with the idea that people would grow up with the BBC, move from 1 on to 2 or 6. So, on the one hand, I was happy. That was the remit. But I remember thinking, ‘Are you sure?’ Because it wasn’t nice.”
Did he take it personally? Moyles was all brash laddishness; Grimshaw was a gay party animal who hung out with Harry Styles and Alexa Chung. Did he fear that the listeners tuning out was something personal? “Oh yeah, because it’s your personality,” he admits. “And I always felt guilty going into the office. Was I letting people down? I felt pressure — [I was] worried, embarrassed and guilty. But you could never dwell on it because you had to do a show the next day. You had to find some hilarious viral moment.”
So 6 Music suits him, as a man now firmly in his forties. He even presents a cookery podcast, Dish, with Angela Hartnett. Next month he’ll host Ezra Collective and Mogwai at the 6 Music Festival in Manchester, while aiming to make the breakfast show his own.
“Radio in your twenties can be scrappy or rubbish because the audience are in their teens or twenties,” he explains. “But you become more conscientious. That’s just getting older, and general worrying. I wouldn’t want to listen to the stuff I did when I was younger. And I wouldn’t want to broadcast it at 40, either.”
Nick Grimshaw presents the 6 Music Breakfast Show from Feb 24
Battle of the breakfast DJs
Scott Mills — Radio 2
The new face of the BBC’s biggest breakfast show, replacing a very successful Zoe Ball at Radio 2. It’s too early to judge, but some critics think he sounds a bit like a competition winner.
• The Scott Mills Radio 2 Breakfast Show review — a peppy, poppy and confident start
Chris Evans — Virgin Radio
Has anyone ever done breakfast better? Virgin’s host set a template that rival radio stations have been desperate to mimic ever since.
Greg James — Radio 1
James has been excellent in his six and a bit years on Radio 1, the nation’s most scrutinised show. The playlists are varied; the imagination, energy and mentions of his dog and cricket endless.
Jordan North, Chris Stark and Siân Welby — Capital
The show that Chris Tarrant once made his own now needs three hosts to fill his large boots. Expect exuberance and wall-to-wall hits.
Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden — Heart
If you loved the 1990s, you’ll love Heart’s early-morning duo. Less cutting-edge than a pillow, and hence a huge brand.
Which podcasts have you enjoyed listening to recently? Let us know in the comments below
