Chris Evans

When looking back at Britpop, it's important to look at some of the influential people other than the bands.

One of the most important was Chris Evans. As Breakfast show presenter on Radio 1 (1995-1997), the then biggest show on British Radio, then later as host of 'TFI Friday' (1996-2000) on Channel 4, Evans was in a position where he could break bands into the public arena. One of the most famous of these were Ocean Colour Scene, when he used one of their songs ('The Riverboat Song') repeatedly during TFI Friday.

It is worth mentioning though that Evans did have a reputation as something of a "dadrocker", i.e. he seemed to favour the more retro Britpop bands such as Oasis, Ocean Colour Scene, Reef, Cast etc. Also, he seemed strangely obsessed with poor commercial music such as Texas. To this day, critics of his Radio 2 Breakfast Show make the same observations; it seems little has changed.

That said, Britpop was already well underway before Chris Evans jumped on the bandwagon. Personally, I see Evans as a "personality" DJ rather than a "music" DJ anyway, so I don't think it any great surprise that he was hardly on the cutting edge of music of the time. He was more into the "lad and ladette culture" side of the time I think rather than a hardcore music fan.

To be fair, he did champion bands like Pulp and Black Grape at the time though, and bands such as Gene and Longpigs did make it onto the show too so it wasn't all bad I guess.

If you really want to see what Evans was about on 'TFI Friday', you can see best of compilations on YouTube here.