The Nation's Favourite: The True Adventures of Radio 1 [Paperback]

At first glance, a year in the life of a radio station seems a curiously insubstantial topic for a full-length book. But Simon Garfield was fortunate that the 12 months he spent as a fly on the wall of Radio 1 were among the most eventful in the station's 30-year history. To put the ensuing revolution in context, it is important to remember that for many years Radio 1 had been the country's only national pop network, and as such, its stranglehold on the nation's pop tastes was unquestioned. Garfield's arrival coincided with a change of direction: under controller Mathew Bannister, the network was determined to ditch its middle-aged image.

The general impression of Radio 1 at the time was summed up by comedian Harry Enfield's archetypal babbling DJ, with the music always coming a distant second to the egos: "Tuesday's the only between Monday and Wednesday-type day we've got, mate. It may not have the glamour and excitement of a Saturday, or the mournfulness of a Monday morn, but it's our Tuesday, the good, old-fashioned, honest to goodness, down to earth, great British Tuesday, and if those Eurocrats, Bureaucrats and other Bonkerscats try and take our Tuesday away from us, they'll have go get past me first!"

In the end it was Chris Evans who single-handedly gave Radio 1 some credibility--and probably prevented it being privatised; and Garfield's chronicle of Evans' rise and fall is riveting--a first-hand account of truly Machiavellian court politics. --Patrick Humphries

In 1993, BBC Radio One gained a new controller. Matthew Bannister said he was going to reinvent the station, the most popular in Europe. But things didn't go exactly to plan. The station lost millions of listeners. Its most famous DJs left, and their replacements proved to be disasters. Radio One's commercial rivals regarded the internal turmoil with glee. For a while a saviour arrived, in the shape of Chris Evans. But his behaviour caused further upheavals, and his eventual departure provoked another mass desertion by listeners. What was to be done?

In the middle of this crisis, Radio One bravely (or foolishly) allowed the writer Simon Garfield to observe its workings from the inside. For a year he was allowed unprecedented access to management meetings and to DJs in their studios, to research briefings and playlist conferences. Everyone interviewed spoke in passionate detail about their struggle to make their station credible and successful once more. The result is a touching, exciting and often hilarious portrait of a much loved national institution as it battles back from the brink of calamity.

Simon Garfield was born in 1960. He is the author of Expensive Habits: The Dark Side of the Industry, The End of Innocence: Britain in the Time of AIDS, which was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize, The Wrestling, The Nation's Favourite: The True Adventures of Radio 1, Mauve, The Last Journey of William Huskisson, The Error World and the Mass Observation trilogy Our Hidden Lives, Private Battles and We Are At War. Mini: the True and Secret History of the Making of a Motor Car was published in 2009.