In at the deep end

In this time of deep government suspicion over the licence fee, his Radio 1 bosses think his job is bigger than just the breakfast show. “The BBC has traditionally brought in younger audiences by playing them new music on Radio 1,” says Ben Cooper, the station’s controller. “If that stops and a generation doesn’t get the BBC habit, it’s almost an existential problem for the corporation. The breakfast show’s presenter can’t alienate younger listeners. Nick is like the cooler older brother for the generation born after 1990. He’s a picture of who they are and who they want to be.”

Grimshaw’s camp, dapper appeal and self-deprecating wit fit perfectly into the ideal light-entertainment personality slot. With a cast of famous friends — the aforementioned Delevingne, Pixie Geldof, Harry Styles, Alexa Chung and Kate Moss have all popped into the breakfast show — he manages to sound as if he’s simultaneously revelling in and mocking celebrity pop culture.

For instance, he says that when he got the Radio 1 job, Moss told him: “‘What you want, darling, is to do what I do. Sometimes I go to work. Sometimes I go to work hungover. Sometimes I don’t turn up at all. People love that.’” Grimshaw laughs. “I said, ‘Kate, that’s what Chris Evans did.’ ‘Exactly, darling, everybody loved Chris Evans.’ ‘Kate, they sacked him.’”

In the same breath, he explains how he briefs guests before interviews. “I always tell them, ‘Don’t be a millionaire and say you’re tired. People are going to work and it’s really annoying.’” He shrugs. “People saying, ‘Oh my God, I’m so tired, I’ve just flown in from LA...’ And the listeners are, like, ‘What? I’m a nurse on an early shift. That’s what I call tired.’”

Significantly, he is the first gay full-time presenter of the breakfast show. (Scott Mills has been used as holiday cover.) In theory, he came out in August 2012, shortly after Radio 1 announced his move to the slot. To say “came out”, however, implies that at some point he’d been in. “I think you’re only coming out if you’ve been married for 30 years,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I’ve never pretended to be straight, and my parents were always fine about it.”

Given the jokey homophobia of his boorish predecessor, Chris Moyles, it’s a measure of the nation’s new-found radical social liberalism that Grimshaw’s audience could not care less who he fancies. At all ages, support for gay marriage is up by 20% since it was introduced, according to the British Social Attitudes Survey, while young millennials in particular are increasingly flexible in their views on sexuality. “I think this generation is open to anything and that’s a really healthy way to be,” he grins happily. “There’s no labels on people — which I really like. Older generations were so defined by labels — I’m a rocker or I’m a mod, or I’m straight or I’m gay. Now there’s a nice fluid movement. You don’t have to fit one format.”

Nonetheless, there is something old-fashioned about Grimshaw. Born in Moss Side, Manchester, he grew up in Oldham, and knew he wanted to present the Radio 1 Breakfast Show from the age of 10. “It was always precisely that,” he says warmly, leaning back in his chair. “I loved Chris Evans and Zoë Ball. I’d love it when my mum would be trying not to laugh at something rude on the school run. Commercial radio was always too shiny — I feel that people are lying when it’s too perfect.”

His dad, Peter, a marketing executive, and mum, Eileen, a former insurance broker, were wary of his showbiz ambitions — although they weren’t entirely surprised by them. As the youngest of three children, he fought for attention, dressing up as Tina Turner or putting on all his mother’s necklaces and dancing in front of the television when the football was on.

He studied media and communications at Liverpool (“My dad was furious — he’s United”), where he presented the student radio station’s breakfast show: “Not great, because no students were up.” He interviewed the bands passing through and stayed in touch with them on MySpace. Post-university, one such MySpace friend — Tabitha Denholm, from the DJ duo Queens of Noize — suggested applying for an intern’s job at MTV. His sister dressed him for the interview — “Black shirt, grey skinny jeans, new Converse to replace my scruffy student look” — and he couldn’t believe his luck when he landed the gig.

“I was 21, and I’d never been to a party like the ones in London — free booze and famous bands playing every night,” he says, still sounding giddy at the thought of it. “I earned nine grand a year, so we’d go to the parties to nick the food and the drink. I lived on canapés for a year.”

The Hawley Arms, in Camden, was next to the office. Everyone from MTV would go there at lunchtime and in the evening, and he became friends with regulars including Amy Winehouse, “just before Back to Black, when she was that mad jazz woman with a beehive, but no songs”. Work was drawing on the walls, sorting out his social life or bringing Amy in for lunch.“My bosses would say, ‘She can’t come in to work. This is an office.’ I’d say, ‘She’s really fun.’ And they were, like, ‘I’m sure she is, but you can see her at six.’”

X Factor auditions: Simon Cowell, Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, Rita Ora, Nick Grimshaw, Caroline Flack and Olly Murs (Nils Jorgensen)

His contract wasn’t renewed, but he landed a presenting job at E4 in 2007, then Radio 1’s weekend breakfast show. Finally, his agent called him to a meeting with Ben Cooper.

“I was half an hour late and said, ‘Sorry, I’m terrible in the morning,’” he winces. “My agent had her head in her hands, and Ben said, ‘Well, learn to be good at it, because we want you to do breakfast.’” When they announced his appointment, the first photographers arrived outside work and home. Presumably they will be swarming once The X Factor begins and the ITV primetime audience catch a load of him.

“It was nerve-wracking at the start,” he admits of the latter. “But you don’t have time to think on The X Factor. I used to think Sharon [Osbourne] and Louis [Walsh] were nutters, or that Nicole Scherzinger was drunk — but you’re working 20 hours a day and you go insane. It’s full-on anarchy, where producers are begging, ‘Please focus,’ and Simon’s saying, ‘Definitely don’t focus.’”

In an email, Cowell says he hired Grimshaw because “he quotes tons of his favourite auditions he’s seen over the years, and I thought it would be great fun to have someone who’s always been a real fan of the show”. Grimshaw, he says, “loves music with an open mind. I felt that he was going to judge the show as a punter and not a music snob.” It’s safe to say that if Grimshaw pulls this one off, he will be the most important man in broadcasting — Chris Evans is tipping him to present a revived TFI Friday.

That said, his Radio 1 ratings have plummeted — although the most recent set of Rajar figures saw a boost of 350,000 listeners. He doesn’t quite shrug this off, but says: “Radio is a different beast now. The idea of a teenager having a radio in their room is a weird thing. They’ll be getting their music through their phone. We’re up against Apple Music — we’re averaging more than 1m requests a month on the Radio 1 iPlayer and more than 1m views a day on YouTube. No disrespect to radio, but what would affect me is if fewer people were watching YouTube or tweeting me.”

To understand how to reach his listeners’ media generation, he suggests, you should look at Miley Cyrus. “She is an amazing person. She understands how to work the media completely. Yeah, she does silly things and gets her boobs out. But she’s not overly sexualised, she doesn’t slag people off, and she’s had both boyfriends and girlfriends — I like that.

“I went to her dressing room after a show, and she was twerking with her friends and showing everyone her arse and sticking it up on Instagram, because that’s what 21- year-olds do. They don’t care. I want her to be in my judge’s house on The X Factor.”

All of which sounds like a millennial money shot if ever there was one: Miley, Grimmy and a house full of X Factor hopefuls. Like much of Cowell’s or Radio 1’s work, it’s both cutting-edge and curiously eternal — a modern echo of those end-of-the-pier talent shows, with Cyrus as the saucy dame.

Perhaps that’s why Grimshaw works so well right now. In our entertainment industries’ never-ending pantomime, he is our Buttons: cheeky, friendly and at home with both the baron and the balcony in a Grimmy fairy tale. The question is, do enough of us want to join his gang?

The X Factor, ITV1, from Sat