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The Chris Moyles Show Logo

On Monday January 5th 2004 at 7am, the breakfast radio revolution began.

Chris’s first show kicked off with this simply unforgettable five minute opener, put together by imaging company Music4 (the company who make all Chris’s jingles). Comedy Dave called it ”quietly understated”, and it undoubtedly ranks up there as one of the shows’ greatest ever moments.

The new show meant extra additions to the team, with old Newsbeat favourites Dominic Byrne and Juliette Ferrington back on the show full time (click for biogs). Jocelin Stainer also took up a behind the scenes role.

Armed with new jingles and new features, Chris set out to confirm his status as The Saviour Of Radio One.

In truth the year couldn’t have gone much better. By the end of 2004, the show had added over a million listeners and helped push Radio One’s audience back over the 10m mark for the first time since July 2003.

Moyles was also named DJ Of The Year for 2004, by readers of The Sun, Funniest DJ at the Loaded Laftas, and Radio Personality Of The Year at the GQ Awards.

The Chris Moyles Show launched at Breakfast to a huge amount of publicity - newspaper articles, web reviews, billboard advertising (see pic above) and TV adverts.

New daily items on the show included music feature Buzz Off, ramble spot Half Time, traffic spoof One Road Travel and new quiz Car Park Catchphrase. See our features page for details.

The long list of other items on the show during 2004 included: Wes’s Chart Update, International Frog Or Dog, Where’s Aled?”, Reverse-a-Word, Chicks Win Tix, Secret Student, Flat Idol, Rob DJ's Monday Night Pub Quiz, The Moyles Mini Olympics and (the now) infamous King Of Tickets. For classic King Of Tickets audio click here and here.

Other highlights from the year included the day Dave did the show drunk, the day the fire alarm went off on the air, a true karaoke classic being played on Buzz Off - and (perhaps most memorably) the day Dave said Don McLean was dead, only to find out he wasn’t, and was gigging in Glasgow shortly after.

New parodies included Chris’s take on Estelle, Eamon and Michelle McManus.

Moyles was also instrumental in getting ”Mysterious Girl” by Peter Andre re-released, and subsequently to the top of the chart.

Chris’s mate Longman started making regular appearances on the show, so called because he is very tall. He owns a sandwich shop in Leeds.

2004 also saw the Breakfast War commence - Moyles Vs Wogan. Hear an early example of the pair trading blows here. Two welders were even sacked in Scotland later in the year, as they argued over which of the two shows to listen to in the workplace.

In June the team travelled to Portugal to follow England’s progress in Euro 2004, with eleven shows live from their villa just outside Lisbon.

Guests included Noel Gallagher, Norman Cook, Mark Lawrenson and Ray Stubbs. The show was also given a summer makeover with new continental theme music, and specially commissioned jingles.

Features included Easy Portuguesey, Big Villa and Aled’s Guide To Portugal.

Aside from the trip to Portugal, the show toured the UK (and Ireland) in 2004. Chris and the team presented live from a number of cities, including Newcastle, Southampton, Dublin, Leeds, Liverpool, Londonderry and Birmingham. They were also live from Maida Vale in October for a one-off Travis special.

The promotion to Breakfast also meant a sharp increase in the number of celebrity guests on the show. Favourites in 2004 included Will Smith, Richard and Judy, Simon Cowell and Elton John (an interview which turned the air blue).

Friend of the stars Dominic Byrne also mixed with a wide range of Hollywood A-Listers throughout the year, including Tom Cruise, Uma Thurman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kirsten Dunst. His line of questioning was usually quite odd, with his favourite being ”What’s your favourite cheese?”.

Chris also interviewed the Prime Minister Tony Blair for Sport Relief, highlights of which are here.

"Chris, Dave, Rachel and Aled - three good reasons to get up in the morning"

2004 Jingles: Click here and here

Perhaps the defining moment of the show’s new found popularity came in October 2004. What started out as a half arsed parody of Goldie’ Lookin Chain, eventually turned into this.

The debut single by spoof band Mouldy Lookin’ Stain - ”Dogz Don't Kill People (Wabbitz Do), featuring the vocal talents of Chris, Dave and Dom, topped the Official UK Download Chart (with proceeds going to Comic Relief).

MLS also entered the Guinness Book of Records for the fastest ever downloaded single - hear Scott Mills break the news to Chris here.

The “band” also (kind of) headlined Radio One’s One Big Weekend in Birmingham in September, with a unique live performance in costume (see pic to the left). To celebrate the success of The Stain’, chrismoyles.net also started a sister site dedicated to the band. You can still view it here.

Alongside Aled and Rachel, Juliette joined the Stain’ as a backing dancer in Birmingham. It wasn’t long before she was off though. She left in October 2004 to return to BBC Radio Five Live.

Her replacement was Carrie Davis, and Jules’ lasting tribute was her own version of Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits, performed by her colleagues. Hear the emotional farewell here.

On Tuesday October 26th 2004, news broke that Radio One DJ John Peel had died of a heart attack whilst on holiday in Peru.

The following morning, Chris and the team didn’t do their usual show, out of respect. Chris recalled stories about John from his time at Radio One, particularly their feud shortly after Moyles had joined the station in 1997.

In fact in John’s autobiography, his widow Sheila Ravenscroft writes about the two DJs and how Peel initially said ”When Chris Moyles came to Radio One, I thought about strapping explosives to myself and taking us both out”. They later met at a Radio One social gathering, where Peel realised that ”he rather liked him”.

Chris recounted the stories about how John used to struggle to drive the desk, and how he would often end up playing Chris’s jingles out on his show by mistake.

The show went from strength to strength in 2005, ending the year with another huge listener increase of almost half a million, and in the process consolidating Radio One’s overall audience at 10.3 million (their highest share in over four years).

The accolades also kept on coming, as Chris was named Personality of the Year at the Yorkshire Young Achievers Awards, and Radio Personality Of The Year at the 2005 GQ Awards.

A Radio Times survey also named Moyles as the seventh most powerful person in UK radio.

When the BBC made weekly show highlights available as part of their Download and Podcast Trial in June, the show also went straight to the top of the iTunes podcast chart. (Incidentally, the whole podcast archive is available to download here).

Chris was however agitated by the continued success of his Radio 2 rival Terry Wogan, and in September 05 decided to launch a campaign to Say No To Wogan! - jingle here.

The movement was in support of people forced to listen to Wogan on the bus, in the car, at work, around the breakfast table and so on. At first a limited number of car bumper stickers, badges and t-shirts were made available through local BBC stations, alongside special wallpapers to print out and stick round the workplace. Amusingly, Wogan’s newsreader Alan Dedicoat asked Chris for a t-shirt to wear to his next show. Unfortunately BBC bosses didn’t see the funny side though, and Chris was ordered to bin the campaign after just five days.

New features in 2005 included Whattity What, Celebrity Two Word Tango, Sting Ring, Get Dom On It, Yesterday’s Weather and Joce Calls Your Boss.

December also saw the last ever edition of hit quiz Car Park Catchphrase. Star guests on the show in 2005 included the likes of Robbie Williams, Ozzy Osbourne, Ricky Gervais, Carlos Bernard and Louis Walsh.

Notably in May, Chris also crossed picketlines at Radio One to present his breakfast show. Although claiming that he would be sympathetic to BBC staff striking over job cuts, Moyles made no mention of it on the air.

In March 05 Chris went fundraising for Comic Relief, as the ”Red Nose Rally” took the show from John O’Groats to Lands End in the space of seven days. Driven around in a range of “star cars”, including the General Lee, the team helped raise almost £630,000 during their trip. Activities included parallel parking, making pizzas, serving coffee, pumping petrol and cleaning sewerage filters. Dom and Carrie even went feeding sharks. You can view a full archive from the trip here, plus watch Chris presenting the cheque on Comic Relief night in our Video Vault.

The show also took back to the road in December, as the team visited New York for a special weeks worth of shows from the Big Apple. The trip was part of the promotion push supporting Sirius Radio, a satellite radio broadcaster in the States. In a clever marketing move, Radio One was added to its list of stations in July, with shows timeshifted so that Chris remained a breakfast presenter.

The whole team (with the exception of Dom and Carrie) headed out there, for five days of sight seeing and special guests. A montage of the weeks events can be found here.

Broadcasting from the Rockafeller Centre, highlights of the trip included the time exec Rhys was refused entry to the building - and Chris showing off his geeky past. There was also a touching piece from Ground Zero, reflecting of the events of September 2001. Clip here.

Away from the US, Chris and Aled returned to their home towns for live shows. First in January the team visited Aberystwyth, and then as part of Radio One’s ”DJ’s Go Home Week” in late October, Moyles returned to familiar territory in Leeds City Centre.

In a rather bizarre move, the team also presented shows live from Butlins in Skegness, and on board a canal boat in Oxfordshire.

On July 2nd, Chris was anchor of Radio One’s coverage from Live 8, joining Sara Cox and Scott Mills backstage.

Of the many highlights in 2005, perhaps the most memorable was when Paddy Kielty was a guest in September. Comedy Dave’s quiz ”Nic-Nac-Paddy-Wok”, featuring Paddy bashing nic-nacs with a wok, had everyone in hysterics (clip in here, as part of the teams “games day”).

Other favourite moments were Dave’s outburst during the pub quiz, and Aled invading Capital FM live on air.

New parodies included Chris’s take on McFly and the Kaiser Chiefs.

2005 was also the year of The Chris Moyles Show Detox, the teams trip inside the Big Brother house (highlights here) - and one of the most memorable performances in Glastonbury history, by the band simply known as Folk Face. Dave and Dom’s spoof band (by all accounts) “rocked” the Jazz Tent at Glastonbury in June 2005, only to sadly split two months later. Their break up was blamed on "musical differences".

By summer 2006 the show had reached new heights, with RAJAR figures confirming that more people were tuning into Chris than ever before. The figures were up 470,000 from the previous quarter, and brought Radio One’s overall figures up to a high of 10.4 million.

Chris also won his first Sony Gold ever, as he picked up top prize for ”The Entertainment Award” at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel in May. Judges called him ”the master of disciplined indiscipline”.

Chris was also hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons though, as critics accused him of racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia.

In May 2006 he notoriously upset actress Halle Berry over an imitation of a "Big Black Guy" during an interview with her and Hugh Jackman - listen to it here.

In June, Chris was criticised by radio watchdog Ofcom for referring to female listeners as "dirty whores".

In the same month, he rejected a ringtone by saying "I don't like that one, it's gay" live on air, which led to a number of complaints to the BBC, arguing that the use of the word in this context was homophobic. Subsequently Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender charity Stonewall marched with placards demanding Chris’s dismissal during Europride 2006 in London. According to them, “Chris Moyles is not helping young LGBT people struggling to come out through his comments”.

Finally in August 2006, Moyles was also accused of transphobia due to his sketches involving "Tranny Rachel". The organisation Press For Change described the sketches as "a clear example of discrimination financed by the BBC”.

In June 2006 Radio One also announced plans to fine DJ’s for swearing, thought to be a response to this incident which occurred on Chris’s show in February.

On May 22nd, listeners were left in confusion as Chris failed to turn up to present the show, following a day in Cardiff watching his football team Leeds miss out on a promotion to the Premiership. The BBC later insisted it was part of a pre-planned stunt, although Radio One’s early morning hosts JK and Joel were forced to stay on for a six hour shift.

New features in 2006 included Celebrity Tarzan and Beep Beep Busters, although the latter was axed after only four months.

Guests included Chris Martin, Beyoncé Knowles, Patsy Kensit and old friend of the show Billie Piper, in one of Chris’s best interviews in years (download).

The team also travelled to Maida Vale for a live Take That special in April, and caught up with the Queen Of Pop, Madonna, backstage at the Brits in February. Hear the leaked, unedited version of their chat here.

Moyles was also introduced to Her Majesty the Queen in April 2006, as part of her visit to officially re-open BBC Broadcasting House in Portland Place, London.

New song parodies included Chris’s take on Nelly Furtado and Lilly Allen.

In June 2006 the team once more packed up their bags and headed off overseas, to follow England’s fortunes in the FIFA World Cup 2006.

The show came live from two separate locations - a chalet in Grafenhof (near Frankfurt) and BFBS Radio at the Herford Army Base.

All the team (bar Dom) were live for three and a half weeks, with guests including Razorlight, Embrace, Noel Gallagher, Alan Hansen and Ian Wright.

Highlights included Chris playing out spoof German ads and composing a parody for Dom, who was supposedly coming out to visit them (England then got knocked out and it never happened).

The Chris Moyles World Cup Song also went down a treat, initially available to buy via download for a short period. You can also find fools dancing to it on YouTube.

The team returned to London on July 3rd 2006.

On 15 October 2007, the show was extended by 30 minutes, beginning at 6:30am instead of 7:00.