[Gucci Mane]

Originally Posted by underscore

Considering the cars he owns, I don't think he needs the money. Idk how the hell he got that kind of money being a BBC DJ though.

spoilered for length.

Spoiler!

He’s been sacked, he’s been sued, he once sold off his possessions at a stall in Camden Market: Love him or hate him, the life and career of the bad boy of broadcasting, Chris Evans, has never been dull.

The 49-year-old currently presents The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Radio 2 and is taking over from Jeremy Clarkson as the host of Top Gear in May.

But Evans’ estimated £1.6 million-a-year salary is small-fry compared to the £80million or so he earned in the first half of his career – before it all went wrong.

Evans’ rise

Born in Warrington on April Fool's Day 1966, the bespectacled ginger kid didn’t seem particularly destined for a life in the entertainment industry. Evans’ father died of cancer when he was just 13, leaving him inconsolable. He’s since described his father’s death as "the shotgun that started the race", saying: "I was hell-bent on making a success of myself."

Leaving school at 16, Evans’ ran a newsagent then set up his own kiss-o-gram and private detective agencies. His first break in entertainment was as Timmy Mallet’s assistant at Manchester's Piccadilly Radio before moving to London as a presenter for the BBC's Greater London Radio.

His popularity on the airways saw Evans offered a job as co-presenter on Channel 4’s ‘The Big Breakfast’ in 1992. His adrenalin-fuelled presenting style and chemistry with co-presenter Gaby Roslin saw the show become an instant hit. Within two years he could pick and choose his next career move.

He chose a brief stint at Virgin Radio before setting up his own television production company, Ginger Productions. The company’s flagship show ‘Don't Forget Your Toothbrush’ was fronted by Evans and ran for two series in 1994 and 1995. More lucratively, the show’s format was sold to numerous foreign broadcasters while Evans returned to radio to present the Radio 1 breakfast show. The cash was rolling in and Evans seemed unstoppable.

Chris Evans poses in front of a classic Ferrari in Longleat Safari Park during a charity event in aid of Children in Need. Thursday June 30, 2011. (Rod Minchin/PA Wire)
Chris Evans poses in front of a classic Ferrari in Longleat Safari Park during a charity event in aid of Children …
Make it, spend it, make more

But the DJ was spending the money as fast as he could earn it, buying a fleet of cars and blowing hundreds of thousands on drinking binges.

It was his partying that led to his fall from grace at Radio 1. Believing his own invincibility, his first big fall out with bosses followed a 17-hour pub crawl which ended just two hours before Evans was due on air – he was fined a day’s pay of £7,000.

A string of complaints about the content of his show followed before Evans went on to make a series of public demands of Radio 1 management, started turning up late for work, and eventually quit in January 1997.

Meanwhile Evans was still a familiar face on TV. Produced by Ginger Productions, ‘TFI Friday’ started on Channel 4 in 1996 and ran until 2000 when Evans pulled the plug on it.

Continually swapping between TV and radio, the rebellious redhead returned to Virgin Radio to present the breakfast show in September 1997. Once again, he was massive hit, so much that he decided to buy the radio station.

A consortium led by Evans’ Ginger Media Group bought Virgin Radio early in 1998 in a £85million deal which involved Evans signing up to the station as a presenter on a long-term contract.

In 2000 Evans agreed the sale of the Ginger Media Group to the Scottish Media Group (SMG) for £225million, netting Evans almost £80 million and making him the UK’s highest paid entertainer according to the Sunday Times Rich List.

The ginger genius was flying high again: what could possibly go wrong?

Losing the golden touch

First, ‘TFI Friday’ started getting poor reviews and was cancelled in December 2000. Next, things were going wrong at Virgin too and Evans’ repeated on-air endorsements of Ken Livingston in the London mayoral elections saw the station slapped with a £75,000 fine.

Evans was eventually fired for not turning up for work. SMG withheld a large tranche of share options on his departure prompting Evans to sue. He lost, SMG countersued and Evans lost most of the £80million he’d pocketed from the sale.

Meanwhile Evans had set up radio and television production company, UMTV, in August 2002. It produced shows such as ‘Boys and Girls’ and ‘Johnny Vegas: 18 Stone of Idiot’ for Channel 4. The ‘Terry and Gaby Show’, featuring Gaby Roslin and Terry Wogan on Five, looked promising but failed to take off and was axed by the channel after a year.

Evans took to selling off his possessions on a stall at Camden Market, saying: "I just want to get rid of it all, it's just a headache."

Despite his career ups and downs, Evans was still worth about £55million in 2003 according to the Sunday Times Rich List. The cash enabled him to indulge in lavish spending sprees with his then wife Billie Piper.

The pair began dating in December 2000 after 34-year-old Evans famously bought her a silver Ferrari full of red roses the day after their first date. Piper, then aged just 18, couldn’t even drive.

A whirlwind romance followed and the pair married in Las Vegas in May 2001. Stepping back from public life, the next two years were spent travelling before the couple settled at Evans’ country estate in Surrey with a fleet of expensive cars, including a Ferrari, Range Rover, Jaguar and two Ford Mustangs on the drive.
Unsurprisingly for a man who set his chat show in "a bar with no till", Evans also splashed cash buying up bars. By 2007 he owned three pubs, two in Surrey and one in Wales.

Evans and Piper separated in 2004, divorcing in 2007 but remaining the best of friends. Piper said she wouldn’t dream of claiming any of Evans’ fortune which the Sunday Times estimated to be about £45million in 2008.

Stability

After a meteoric rise followed by over-reaching ambition, Evans has matured in the last few years. Now happily married to golfer Natasha Shishman, he has had two children and his shock-jock antics on Radio 1 and Virgin Radio have given way to smooth talking on Radio 2.

He’s even sold some of his cars – with reports that he got as much as £18million for his Ferrari GTO – but that doesn’t mean he’s become any less appealing to audiences.

He’s sitting pretty at Radio 2 – and with Evans in the hot seat the station has secured its highest ever ratings for his Breakfast Show, pulling in a record 9.83million weekly listeners.

And of course he was picked by the BBC to head-up the rebboted Top Gear after Jeremy Clarkson was fired.
According to reports, Evans’s three-year Top Gear contract is thought to be worth at least £1m a year. As well as presenting the show he will also executive produce it, and is said to have negotiated a “hefty production fee”.
This will make him the highest paid star on the Beeb.

However you look at it, there’s no way to deny that the determined 13-year-old from Warrington has indeed “made it”.

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