Do we like Chris Evans?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A clean harm check and a lot of money raised for kids, balanced by 2016 bullying accusations and a sacking that ended in a lost lawsuit.
Chris Evans is a veteran of British breakfast broadcasting. He came up through Channel 4's The Big Breakfast in the 1990s and later fronted the BBC Radio 2 breakfast show. In 2017 that show's auctions helped Radio 2 raise almost £7.7 million for Children in Need, a station record.
His career has had a few stoushes. In 2001 Virgin Radio sacked him after he missed six consecutive shows, saying he had breached his contract. He sued its owners, SMG, seeking £2.5 million in damages and claiming shares worth up to £8.6 million, and he lost in 2003.
In 2016, as he took on Top Gear, he was accused of bullying staff from his Big Breakfast days. A former radio co-presenter said he was “out of control”. Evans reportedly told a friend the claims were “just ridiculous”, and the BBC called the stories “unfounded nonsense”.
That same year a complaint was made to police alleging a sexual assault in the 1990s. He was interviewed under caution, and the Met said there was insufficient evidence to proceed. A spokesman said the complaint failed the evidential test. Nothing was proven either way, and it ended with no charge.
On the harm test, we found nothing from him on trans people, women, migrants, vaccines or climate, and no pattern of working with people who push that stuff. His recent work is a Virgin Radio show and TFI Friday Unplugged. The record is thin on those topics, so that's an absence of evidence rather than a loud endorsement.
The recent thing is TFI Friday Unplugged, which Channel 4 picked up from Virgin Radio's YouTube channel in April 2026, with guests like Sam Ryder, Gemma Arterton and Peter Capaldi. By June it was recommissioned, and Evans celebrated with “Yeeha, we've been recommissioned!” Channel 4 said it lifted ratings with younger viewers.