With his toothy grin, Nick Grimshaw has the manner of a Creature Comforts character come to life, the house cat that moved to London and became a DJ. In ripped skinny jeans, feet up on an old sofa in a photographer’s studio in north London, he’s much the same off-air as on his Radio 1 breakfast show: warmly impudent, funny, opinionated. Touted as a voice of youth, there’s actually something slightly old-fashioned about Grimmy, as he is known. “I don’t like it when men are too show-offy, or trendy,” he says.
He’s talking about clothes: he’s about to launch his own line for Topman, the label’s first celebrity collaboration. With his recent appointment as an X Factor judge, and Radio 1, this makes Grimshaw, 31, something of a youth megabrand of his own. “That’s kinda crazy,” he admits. Does he feel pressure to act 10 years younger, stay down with the kids? “Not at all. Annie Nightingale has her finger on the pulse – she only talks to me via DMs on Twitter – and she’s in her 70s,” he says admiringly. “Up north [where he grew up], it was a big deal to socialise in different age groups, but London’s more accepting of people in their 20s hanging out with people in their 50s.”
His phone buzzes: it’s an email telling him he’ll have the exclusive play of Justin Bieber’s new song on the show tomorrow. He’s instantly thinking about how he will present it, trawling blogs on his phone’s smashed screen. Fidgety with ideas and jokes, Grimshaw doesn’t draw much of a line between work and fun. He Snapchats a video with his publicist’s dog, and laughs at Rita Ora’s latest revealing outfit, posted on Instagram. She’s a friend as well as a fellow X Factor judge. “She always asks me, ‘Do I look mental in this?’ ‘Yes.’”
Grimshaw has the air of a gossipy older brother with access to the best parties. Everyone knows he has famous friends – Cara, Alexa, Pixie, Lily et al – and that he likes to party. He landed the Topman gig after “helping out” at Kate Moss’s most recent launch, where he badgered Sir Philip Green, whom he impersonates as a hilariously grotesque cockney. (“I said, ‘I wanna do one! I wanna do one!’ He goes, ‘Awight, if ya serious about it.’”) The morning after the 2013 Brit awards, Grimshaw rolled into the studio with Harry Styles in tow, dubbing themselves the “straight-through crew”, as neither had been to bed yet.
What would he say to anyone who thinks his success is down to having friends in high places? I’ve touched a nerve. “That’s ludicrous. I’ve worked so hard in music – all extracurricular since I was 15, through holidays, A-levels, university. Nobody gives you a job because you know Harry Styles; loads of people know him.” He describes 20-hour days on The X Factor, up at five, to bed again at two. “They’re constantly filming. You have no sleep, no weekends – I went fully crazy. The second I did get a break I got a chest infection, a throat infection. My body had been barely holding it together.”
How does he find time for all the partying? “I don’t go to any parties! When was the last time I went out?” he asks the room. “Glastonbury? I stay in 90% of the time. I’ll go out once, get busted, and everyone’s like, ‘He’s a maniac.’”
Now in his 30s, Grimshaw is a member of the demographic he was notoriously hired to “chase away” in Radio 1’s search for a loyal, younger audience. His style is tailored to listeners in their teens and early 20s: pop acts are heavily represented, and there is much social media interaction – webcam pranks and games such as Call Or Delete, in which celebrities have to ring or remove one of their phone contacts at random. This aggressive youth-courting has attracted a lot of criticism; the breakfast show lost a million listeners, and earlier this year the station posted its lowest figures in 12 years. Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper has congratulated Grimshaw for “scaring off the over-30s” (who accounted for around 90% of the dip in listening figures) while keeping young listeners happy, a result that some would call a pyrrhic victory. When I mention ratings, a publicist hollers, “They’ve gone up!” (which they have, by about 350,000 over three months.)
Grimshaw is less bothered with particulars. “They go up and down – it seems like nonsense. It’s such an archaic way of measuring things, these little books. [Rajar figures are calculated by a sample adult audience filling out listening diaries for 50 weeks of the year.] The idea of a teenager even having a radio is funny. They don’t need me to tell them there’s a new song out – the artist has tweeted it, with the video, and a link to buy it.” Rather than being pushed under by such rapid change, he sees it as a wave to be ridden. “You think more about how you’re consumed, which is visually and on a phone. We have a million views a day on YouTube. The technology killing the radio is also evolving it.”
While the show’s format may be his, how much of the Radio 1 breakfast playlist does he actually like? “I like about 75% of what we play. But I’m honest about it. There’s the odd thing that’s moronic – David Guetta putting a dance beat under If You’re Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands. Or this song by Silento where he’s repeatedly singing, ‘Now break your legs! Break your legs!’ You’ve not put your heart and soul into a song about breaking your legs. You can’t make that and expect people not to take the piss.”
Grimshaw’s ascent to broadcasting’s upper echelons was rapid. As a student radio DJ at Liverpool University, he kept in touch with the acts he interviewed via Myspace. One of them, DJ duo Queens of Noize, suggested he move to London and apply for an internship at MTV. He got it, and spent his time mostly drawing on the walls and inviting in Amy Winehouse (before she’d released any music), because she was fun. “When my dad asked what my job was, I’d say, ‘Er, deciding what colour the stage should be at the MTV movie awards?’ ‘You’re kidding,’ he’d say. ‘Get a job.’”
MTV didn’t keep him on, but Grimshaw was spotted by a Channel 4 producer at Glastonbury, and in 2007 started presenting the music breakfast show with Alexa Chung. Later that year, he joined Radio 1, hosting youth strand Switch with Annie Mac, then the 10pm to midnight slot in 2009. This was followed by the flagship job three years later, when he replaced Chris Moyles, the rude, self-styled “saviour of Radio 1”. Grimmy – physically slight, gay, self-deprecating – couldn’t have represented a cleaner break. (In a few weeks the pair will go head to head when Moyles returns to radio, hosting Radio X’s breakfast show.)
The 12th series of The X Factor debuted with the lowest audience in a decade, and lost out to Strictly Come Dancing in last weekend’s ratings war. Why does he think the show has been losing viewers?
“Nothing to do with me… Louis Walsh!” he coughs. “No, I think the show needed to change. When you watch shows and there are catfights and judges bickering, I find it tedious. This year, it’s lighter and sillier. We all get on; everyone’s having fun. I don’t know if that’s boring for people to hear.”
I don’t think so, I say. You can contrive arguments, but you can’t contrive people genuinely getting on. Grimshaw likes this, and leans over my recorder, repeating my words with authority. “That’s what Simon does to us on the show,” he says. “Cheryl will say something good, like, ‘I think you should sing Mary Mary by Shackles’ and he’ll go, ‘Yeahhhh, so I think you should sing Mary Mary by Shackles.’ Then he cuts us out in the edit, so it’s just him saying it. Genius.”
With all his connections, Grimmy has always felt like our (fabulously indiscreet) man on the inside. You get the impression you could ask him anything. For instance, which of his celebrity friends eats the most? “Hahaha. Well, when Pixie Geldof and I get takeaway at her house, we order so much it’s embarrassing, so she’ll shout towards the empty kitchen, ‘Guys, food’s here!’”
He avoided advice from his fashion designer friends when it came to the Topman collection, although he has new respect for them. “Before, I’d always wonder why they were fiddling in the wings, last minute. You have two shows a year – why are you not finished? It’s because there’s no end point. You see a film or exhibition and suddenly realise everything should be grey! Or only bright colours!” Have they given him any feedback? “I was at dinner with Kim Jones from Louis Vuitton and he asked if my shirt was one of his. I was all smug: ‘Actually, it’s one of mine.’ Henry Holland wants stuff from it; Harry’s been out in it.”
On the day we speak, One Direction have just announced they’ll be taking a break. Has he been in touch with Harry Styles? Does he have the inside track? “I don’t. Genuinely. People think being a pop star is glamorous, but it’s exhausting and disorienting at their level. They don’t see the world, they just do press in different cities. They’re men now, and need to experience some actual life.” He suggests the rampant speculation is unfair. “Everyone takes breaks. Katy Perry’s off at the moment. No one’s crying.”
Does he think society is too obsessed with celebrities? “Yes. It’s fine to take an interest – the Romans had celebrities, the Greeks had their gods. But I hate it when people say, ‘I love celebs.’ Ugh. What does that mean? You must love something specific about them.” Who doesn’t he like? “I hate that my niece loves Kylie Jenner. Why? It’s just perpetuating that moronic Kardashian thing. I love Kanye West, though. Pop stars should be crazy, and make grand statements. ‘My name’s Kanye and I’m God.’ Sorry, who? ‘God.’”
Grimshaw is not an obvious choice to design Topman’s first menswear line, I suggest. Does he consider himself a style icon? “Yes, I do, actually. Massively so,” he deadpans. “I guess they chose me because I’m not snobby. At fashion shows everyone’s so sour-faced. I can’t take it seriously – at the end of the day it’s a cardigan.”
But the design process turned out to be more hands-on than he’d dreamed. Gordon Richardson, creative director at Topman, may have regretted giving Grimshaw his number. “I’d call him at midnight with 30 ideas about fonts and plastic bags.” He tells me the fastenings on his Topman backpack are 22p more expensive than Prada’s. He also changed his mind a lot. “I’d watch a documentary about the Rolling Stones and decide we had to do white trousers, so Gordon would bring loads in. But the next day I’d go: ‘We can’t do white trousers: I’d just had loads of wine when I said that.’ I thought I was being naughty, but he said it was all part of the design process.”
He will confess to a lifelong interest in his appearance. “It’s posh kids who always want to look scruffy. Growing up in Oldham, we wanted to dress up.” He credits his Manchester United-loving father and brother as early style influences. “I love how much football hooligans in Manchester in the early 90s cared about how they looked – those pristine branded tracksuits,” he half-jokes. He remembers wearing his mum’s long white Burberry trenchcoat to his tough comprehensive school. “They all thought I was packing freezers at Asda.”
His Topman collection has a debonair Brit rock’n’roll emphasis, with blouse-shirts for men, Bella Freud-esque jumpers and smartly detailed jackets. (He tried to sketch his dog, Pig, on a jumper but it looked like a horse, so he got his friends to have a go and used the best one.) Grimshaw describes his personal style as an amalgam of Kurt Cobain, Keith Richards and Pharrell Williams. “I’d love to dress more like Pharrell, but I don’t know how he pulls it off at his age. If I go out in a camouflage hoodie, everyone’s like, ‘Are you OK?’ I’m 31 now – I can’t wear that.”
He seems to be perennially single, and has spoken in the past about getting bored with people quickly. What kind of guy does he fancy? “Funny, and really… themselves. I don’t have a type. All you have to be is someone who believes in yourself – and look exactly like James Franco.”
The rule about self-belief applies to friends, too. “When pop stars are embarrassed by their work, that’s not attractive. Or when they have a persona. I had a guest recently who wants to be seen as ‘nice’, so they were nice to me on air, but not to my producer or anyone else. I don’t like that.”
After a long day’s shooting, our time is up: Grimshaw’s on a tight schedule and has to interview Emma Watson. They won’t be talking much about her new film Regression, since it’s about child abuse and a satanic witch-hunt, and that’s a bit sensitive for 8am. “Let’s have her play Celebrity Tinder, with really awkward people like Daniel Radcliffe,” Grimshaw decides. “Then we’ll animate it so people can watch on their phones.”
For all the breeziness and spontaneity, his perkiness sits above something nerdier, more obsessive. “I can’t look at clothes without thinking about their physics now,” he says, “the weight of the buckle, the detail on the zip. It’s the same when I’m figuring out how they got certain shots on TV, or spotting bad links on other people’s shows. So I’ve ruined radio, telly, music and clothes for myself. I can’t enjoy anything any more.”
Later, I check Grimshaw’s Instagram and see pictures of him on the red carpet at the X Factor launch. Selfies with Cheryl and Rita sit above intimate lunches with Douglas Booth and Daisy Lowe; his life doesn’t look very ruined. He’s evergreen, Peter Pan-like, full of enthusiasm for the next thing. What’s his secret? “I don’t do anything I don’t want to. I never do anything that feels like work.” And why should he, when having fun works so well for him?
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