CAROL Vorderman has revealed her surprise link to I’m A Celebrity’s Chris Moyles – and the pair go back decades.
Appearing on the This Morning sofa to analyse last night’s jungle action, Carol said she was rooting for Chris after he was seen getting increasingly agitated by life in camp.
Carol Vorderman has known Chris Moyles since the 80s
Chris is struggling with life in the jungle
Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby were surprised by the pair’s connection
She told hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield: “In the early 1980s, up in Leeds, I had a kids’ request show and I had a little letter from a child, aged eight, saying ‘ can I come and help you and get the music from the music library?…’ Chris Moyles, aged eight, used to help me every Saturday.”
Stunned Holly exclaimed: “No way!”
Smiling Carol responded: “His first time in radio.”
Chris would go on to become a radio titan, famously hosting the Radio 1 breakfast show.
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But his tenure ended on a sour note, and this week Chris slammed the BBC for “firing him with no notice”.
The shock jock revealed he was given minimal notice about his sudden exit from the station in 2012, despite being there for a decade and a half.
In a rare intimate conversation with Matt Hancock, Moyles revealed the circumstances around leaving his long-held position as the breakfast show host, claiming the BBC gave him just hours to prepare to say his goodbyes on air.
“I knew that Radio One is a conveyor belt and you might be there for a year, or you might be there for 15 years, but you’re going to fall off the end at some point,” he said.
Hancock compared that it felt similar in politics, and questioned his feeling behind saying goodbye to his landmark show.
“I left happy. I was a bit cross after I left and I was cross… they handled it so badly, so badly,” Chris explained. “So I went in with my agent and the controller and we sit down and he goes, ‘Look, this isn’t very easy, I think it’s time we wrapped the show up. We’re going to announce in the news at half 10 that Nick Grimshaw’s taking over.’”
“My agent went, ‘That’s out of order’ and it all got a bit steamy. And I’m like, ‘both of you calm down, stop.’ I said to the boss, ‘You can’t do that.’ He goes, ‘Well if we don’t do that, it’ll get out.’
“I said, ‘Well up until 60 seconds ago, I didn’t know about it. So, after 15 years, you can’t do that. I have to announce that I’m coming off the breakfast show and we have to work out what’s happening. This is not a two minute conversation and that’s naughty’.”
Eventually, they came to a compromise to allow Chris to announce he was exiting the show, but Nick was announced as his replacement shortly after.
“They announced it at 10.30 the next morning. We finished at 10 they announced it at 10.30 that Nick was taking over,” he continued. “I was just like, ‘Ok, alright.’ But, they gave us three months to say goodbye, which was great. So I said, ‘You know, thanks for everything, cheers.”
However, it seems that everything happens for a reason, with Chris using his newfound freedom to spend a year in Los Angeles, where he met his now long-term girlfriend, Tiffany Austin.
“When you do the breakfast show on Radio 1 you get these amazing opportunities coming your way, but you always know in the back of your head, one day that will finish,” Chris later summarised in the Bush Telegraph. “So when it did finish, to do the musical, to do my own tour, and then meet my future girlfriend – then my life changed entirely.
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“So, no regrets, all happy, it’s been a good journey so far.”
The Celeb Report Online has contacted the BBC for comment.
I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here airs weeknights at 9pm on ITV.
Chris Moyles hosted the Radio One breakfast show
Chris said his girlfriend Tiff was a plus side of leaving the station
