Jump to content
Unofficial Mills

Mills on his partner, parents and new contract


Jono

Recommended Posts

OUTSIDE Radio 1, Scott Mills is smoking a fag. Not in any relaxed way as you might expect from the station's great joker, but in a slightly anxious, round-the-back-of-the-bikeshed way, like he half expects to stub it out in a hurry.

He gives a lovely big smile when approached but there's a tinge of ruefulness about it, like he's been caught on the hop. He's dressed in jeans and a short-sleeve check shirt and there's as big a fug of nervous energy around him as cigarette smoke. His nails are bitten beyond the quick, a tiny speck of dried blood visible where he's bitten too far. With six million listeners a day he's second only to Chris Moyles at Radio 1, but he has none of Moyles' plump complacency.

"Oh no," he says instantly when asked if he has similar levels of self-belief. "I'm not such a self-believer that I think nobody could ever come and take my place." He laughs nervously. "That's not my kind of personality, on or off-air actually. It's not really my style."

Mills' personality is the subject of one of the most unlikely shows at this year's Edinburgh Festival: Scott Mills: the Musical. It started, as most things on his radio show do, as a joke. The show has now become hugely successful thanks to his quirky humour: phoning up some hapless worker in a pizza place and goading them into a frenzy of frustration with a trail of dumb questions followed by an order for liver and pineapple pizza. And there's no radio silence quite like the silence following Mills' throwaway "I love you" to callers, some of whom are lorry drivers called Darren, and who occasionally feel compelled to stutter "Eh… luv yoo too, Scott."

So when an internet rumour started that Mills was going to appear in a festival musical, his radio team simply seized the opportunity and invited listeners to help create the show. He won't play himself because "I'd be awful for one. And because if someone plays me we can do a search for a Scott and it's more interactive." Anyway, there's a precedent to follow. "Joseph didn't play himself, did he?" says Mills.

We walk down Great Portland Street from Radio 1 to a café for coffee. Mills doesn't normally do detailed interviews, apart from one in the Guardian six years ago. It was more a public announcement about his sexuality than an interview, but we'll come to that later. He likes his low-key level of fame, though his profile has increased since doing the midweek lottery show.

"I have got this great thing where people know who you are, and you have all the benefits of that, but I'm not really famous – and I love that. I never wanted to be famous. I just wanted to be on the radio. When I first wanted to be on radio, even though these people were well known, they weren't pop-star-famous. Since then the whole world has become obsessed with celebrity. I mean, it's really nice when people ask for autographs but it still makes me go… eh?"

He loves fellow DJ Fearne Cotton but she comes into work accompanied by five paparazzi and he thinks: hmm, don't fancy that much.

Surprisingly, Mills was a Very Serious Child: shy, sensible and always relied on to be good. His show is a delayed adolescence for the 35-year-old, who grew up with his parents and younger brother in Southampton. He and his brother are close now but it was a different story as children. "My brother was the devil child and I was the quiet sensitive one. He would pick arguments and fights and I'd be sitting there, just wanting to play my music. He'd admit this now, but he was like a child from a horror film. You'd have to lock him in his room or he'd just eat his way out of his cot. He was awful."

They've become close in recent years. His brother, a carpenter, came to live with Scott to renovate his house. "I bought my house in Camden and it was a crap hole, just awful, and he completely redid it. He came up to London and kind of lived with me for eight months, so we got to go out a lot and had fun and we went on holiday last year. We were never close growing up but we're really close now and our sense of humour has come together."

When Scott was 12 or 13, the boys' parents split up. "I kind of knew it was going to happen for a while because they just weren't getting on and, actually, when it happened I thought it was best for both of them. Some people have a really hard time with it but I don't think I did because I just thought as long as they're both okay it's fine. I was always mature beyond my years."

Maybe that's why music was never about teenage defiance for him. He loved music from his earliest years, often playing his parents' old Motown records. The first live act he saw was Michael Jackson, who he thought was brilliant, and the first record he bought was Madonna's Holiday. "I liked really safe pop music. It wasn't 'I'm going to rebel,' it was more 'Ooh I'd quite like to listen to this now'. I just loved pop, slightly feel-good pop." He still does, though his taste is wider now and his listeners might be surprised to learn he occasionally likes listening to classical music.

He spent a lot of time alone as a child but he also pretended to have his own radio show with his mum and brother as listeners. "Sometimes my brother would go out on his bike and I would say 'Oi, come back!' Or my mum would say 'No, I don't want to listen today' and I'd say 'What do you mean? I've got no listeners!' I wanted to be on radio for as long as I can remember." It wasn't so much a contradiction of his shyness, more a consequence of it. He couldn't relate easily to people, and radio offered a connection.

"Because I was a shy kid, the idea of being able to talk to thousands of people without meeting them was quite good. TV never really held the same buzz for me. I just think radio is much more intimate. I remember sitting in my bedroom talking to myself, or to my mum, who was my listener, but I always pretended to be on Radio 1, so you can imagine my mum finds it a bit weird now."

Being a DJ is the only thing he ever had tunnel vision about, and he lost interest at school. At 12, he volunteered for hospital radio. "I was so shy I got my Nan to phone them. She asked if I could come and sit in on a show and she actually came with me… bless! I just sat there and listened and then I used to go in and help every Tuesday and they put me on air." He kept his hobby fairly quiet at school, though he was brought in for end-of-term discos. Whenever Mills did seriously confide to anyone that he wanted to be a DJ, they always laughed.

Except Chris Carnegy. Carnegy was his first boss in local radio, and the man Mills says he owes most to in his career. Carnegy sent him a letter saying "Send me a tape quick and I'll make you a star!" Mills loved that.

He watched Carnegy carefully, copying what he did. What, though, did Carnegy see in him? "Somebody who was completely driven to do it. Somebody with boundless enthusiasm who was a bit shy and couldn't really say what he thought. If he ever called a meeting I'd say…" He breaks off and adopts a comically high falsetto, "'Yes. Yes, okay. Whatever you say. Bye then.' I remember one time my contract was up and we went to the local pub and it was like, right, I'm going to pay you this much, and I went 'Okay, bye then.' There was no negotiation at all. The money didn't really matter to me, just the fact he was giving me another year's contract."

Mills was Britain's youngest DJ, with his own show at just 16. His slot was in the early hours of the morning and he was entirely alone at the station. From Southampton he moved to Bristol, then Manchester, and finally to London and what he thought would be his dream job at Radio 1. But there were a few trials to get through before he quite got to the dream.

On the table in front of him, Mills' fingers play with his phone. Could he just pop outside? He's moving house and has to take a call about his mortgage but he also wants a cigarette. Outside on the pavement he paces up and down. I can see him through the window, lighting a cigarette when the call is finished, puffing dementedly on it before throwing most of it away, and coming back inside with a smile. The mortgage has been approved.

I NEED TO ask about the Guardian interview, I say, wondering if the atmosphere will sour. It was a short piece in which he came out publicly about his homosexuality. Mills is reputed not to like talking about his sexuality, but it's a part of him and therefore hard to avoid. But as it turns out, he talks perfectly naturally about it. Was he scared when the interview came out? "It was scary," he admits. "I remember being in the house and going: oh no, it's today it's going to be in. But actually there was nothing really to be scared about. I don't know if I expected all the listeners to turn on me, but you don't know what to expect when you do something that big."

Probably people wouldn't care if it came out now, he says. Maybe not. But perhaps it only looks that way from the vantage point of a good judgment call all those years ago. A tabloid splash is always worse than a freely given interview, even if people don't care about the contents. "I am pleased I did it quite early on," he agrees. "I wanted it to be out there and not have to worry about it. I just thought: what's the point in pretending? But it doesn't define me. It's just the way it is."

His parents already knew presumably? "Yeah, I told them when I was 16." Another sign of his maturity perhaps. "The only problem was we hadn't really told my brother because he wasn't old enough to understand or get it, and I don't think my grandparents knew."

He had been close to his grandparents, was the good kid who made cakes with his Nan on a Saturday afternoon. He was devastated when three grandparents died in quick succession. But back when the interview was due, a few conversations had to be conducted quite quickly. "I told my brother and he said 'Yeah, I've known for years.'"

Had his parents also guessed before he told them? "My mum did. Mums know. You think they don't, but they do." Does he have a partner now? "If you'd asked me a year ago, I'd have said no. I won't say his name or anything but yeah, I've met this guy, the friend of a friend. Friends always say 'Oh, I know someone who is perfect for you,' and you say 'Oh really? That's nice.' But inside you go: they're not going to be. So when one of my mates was saying that to me for about a year and a half I just never got round to it. But I met him in the last part of last year and we got on amazingly well."

He likes being part of a couple? "I like it now I've got it, but I've had it before and it's not been the right thing and therefore no, I'd prefer to be on my own." But he's certainly happy at the moment. "Watch this space. It's really, really good. When you feel like that you do feel much better being in that unit and having someone look out for you."

His sexuality has not caused any real backlash from listeners, though it's possible many don't know because it's simply not an issue in his show. "Yeah, there's the occasional text message at work but nothing…" he says vaguely. What kind of message? "Oh you know… you'll get that about anything. You need to get used to it. You need to build this wall where it doesn't matter. If you read every single negative text and took it in you would go mad. You wouldn't feel great about yourself." So is he easily hurt? "Yeah." He smiles. "I'm quite a flower really."

Years ago, his mum got worried about him. "I remember her saying to me: 'Scott, you're quite good at this job but you're not cut out for it'. She wasn't saying 'You're rubbish', she was just saying 'I'm worried for you'. She knows I am quite sensitive and deep down quite shy, and she knows how much of a battle it is for me." Yet his listeners would never know from his banter. Has his personality been partly formed by radio? "Yes", he says immediately. Despite his long career, it's only relatively recently that he feels he has been able to be himself on air.

"I wasn't myself on radio at all. I think it takes ages for you to find who you are. I have my first show on cassette and it's just… I was putting on this really deep voice because my voice was still way up there. If you heard it, you'd say 'That's not you'. I was just saying weird things and trying to be really grown up. I only really think I've been able to show my personality since I came to Radio 1." He's himself now? "Pretty much. It's a larger than life version of me. I couldn't be that animated all the time, but for three hours a day… it's like a performance."

His breakthrough came after four years of early morning shows. It was a depressing time for Mills. His body clock was out of sync with everybody round him, and he felt his career was going nowhere. He says he had his teenage years in his mid twenties when he drank too much and partied too hard because his real teenage years were spent working hard and being a radio geek. Presumably this wild period was connected to the stagnation in his career? Maybe, he admits. It was an emotionally difficult period.

Then Jamie Theakston took a career break and Mills was asked to fill in his Saturday morning slot. "I could have just played the records and said 'Radio 1!' and been all smiley. But I'd spent a lot of my career not being completely myself, and when I did those Saturday morning shows it wasn't that I didn't care, because I did care, but I just thought: this is my last chance, let's go for it. I just relaxed, that's all it was." It triggered a chain of events that led to his current 4-7pm prime-time slot.

Radio has boosted his confidence as a person, though he and Jo Whiley bonded over a fear of personal appearances. He had to do a premiere once in Leicester Square and found it excruciating. Then there was the speech he had to give when his mum remarried, and his voice shook throughout. "Everyone thought: oh, Scott's speech is going to be brilliant because he's such a joker. But I couldn't do it. You could see the disappointment on people's faces. Everyone was expecting this blinding, laugh-a-minute speech." But wasn't it okay when he got into it? "No, I was awful."

He gets adrenaline rushes rather than nerves at live performances now. He does loads of student gigs, but he likes them because students love his radio show. Then there's TV. Earlier this year he shot a documentary with David Hasselhoff in which Mills went to stay with him in LA. Hasselhoff has now come to London to film with Mills for a six-part series for Living TV this autumn. "If you had told me five years ago I would be friends with David Hasselhoff I would have spat my tea out in your face. But we get on really well. We're not alike in any way apart from the early drive and ambition. But I love him to bits. He's hilarious."

He phoned his mum up and said he was bringing the Hoff to tea, so they went round and sat talking to Mills' granddad in the garden. But most of his friends are not in showbusiness. His life has changed but his mum reckons he hasn't. "She said 'You're still the same person' and I was touched by that." Money means nothing to him, partly because he was never spoiled as a child. He hasn't ever bought a status item? "No. I'm not materialistic at all. Money honestly doesn't matter to me. I've got a big TV, but apart from that…"

He still lives with Fraser, the flatmate he's shared a house with for nine years, and Fraser will move to the new house. "We're best mates. We never fall out and are very relaxed. It's chilled in my house. It's not like… you've left the butter out of the fridge! I couldn't live with someone like that. I love my home and we have good fun."

He worries too much, he admits. But surprisingly for such a nervous person there's one thing he doesn't bite his nails over, and that's the future. He reckons he probably won't earn as much as he does now in the future but that doesn't scare him. He has just signed another two-year contract at Radio 1 and that's as far as he looks ahead. "This is the only job I've ever had and you only think in a one-year or two-year period. But I think I will be all right. It's the only thing I feel 100 per cent about. I'll be all right." He will too.

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/features/Interview-Scott-Mills-Radio-One.5513524.jp

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 51
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

wow. thats a really well written piece. and very interesting too. just don't get why he did it with a rubbish newspaper?

You'd end up with reporters looking for scandal in the national newspapers. The Scotsman is big up there and will promote Edinburgh - job done.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

wow. thats a really well written piece. and very interesting too. just don't get why he did it with a rubbish newspaper?

This is indeed an excellent interview. I don't quite understand why you feel The Scotsman is a 'rubbish newpaper' though?

'To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity'.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I want one of those papers! Who wants to get me one? :D

That was an amazing piece and he's like a flower. Awwwwwwwww makes you want to hug him! Glad Fraser will still be the flatmate, would be weird without his occasional antics and phone ins. Fraser should do OWO!

I am Burdened with Glorious Purpose - Loki Laufeyson

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes well I say 'shops' but I really mean little huts that we can buy things from up here.....they don't build actual shops in Scotland unless it's to sell haggis or tartan.

I was actually joking more about Norfolk. There's no shop open in my town after 3pm on a Sunday and you'd be unlikely to get a newspaper after 12pm.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...