Queen Elizabeth II was a fan of Sir Terry Wogan, once telling the broadcaster that she listened to him every morning. Her grandson the Prince of Wales is more of a Scott Mills fan.
Prince William, accompanied by Kate, gave an interview to Mills a few years ago when he was at Radio 1 and they were promoting their mental health campaign. Now, as Mills prepares to take over the Radio 2 breakfast slot where Wogan became a legend, he recalls how the heir to the throne revealed to him his familiarity with Mills’s sillier output.
At the time Mills had a regular segment on the show called Innuendo Bingo, in which players, including celebrities, had to fill their mouths with water and then try not to spray it out while listening to clips loaded with double entendres.
“They came in, blah, blah, blah, sat down, the songs were on, and I’d been versed on how to address them, but you know, of course, you’re worried you don’t say the wrong thing,” says Mills of the royal visit. “And then, I remember, off air, him saying to me, ‘Scott, I absolutely love Innuendo Bingo.’ And Kate went, ‘What’s Innuendo Bingo?’ And he went, ‘I’ll tell you later, darling.’ [I thought,] ‘I wish you said that on air’ and ‘Oh my God, he really does listen.’ And then he quoted something that I’d said just the week before. I was like, ‘OK, so I know that sometimes you get briefed, but that’s too much information. You would not know that unless you had actually listened.’
“I remember that day so well because it was crazy. I looked across and it was me on the television with William and Kate. What a bonkers day.”
Mills, 51, uses the word “bonkers” quite a lot in our chat, especially when we get on to talking about how, from today, he will be sitting in the hottest seat in radio.
The Radio 2 Breakfast Show, where he succeeds Zoe Ball, who hosted for almost six years, is the biggest breakfast show in the UK, with 6.3 million weekly listeners. Mills, who was at Radio 1 for 24 years before taking over Steve Wright’s afternoon slot on Radio 2 in 2022, will now provide the soundtrack for Middle England as it gets ready for work and school.
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The Breakfast Show has been the domain of the biggest beasts of the wireless world, including Ken Bruce, Terry Wogan (twice) Chris Evans and Zoe Ball. “Wogan, Evans, Zoe … and then me. That’s bonkers. I’m not from any kind of radio or television [background]. I’m just a boy from Eastleigh that wrote to the local radio station one day on the off chance that I might be able to come and make some tea.”
Is he daunted? “Scarier than this is the first time you appear on Radio 2. You lose sleep over it. It is the beast of all radio stations in Europe. It’s like the feeling of going to big school. You can literally look across the way, and there’s Bob Harris and there’s Tony Blackburn. People that I grew up listening to, thinking that I would never work alongside in a million years.
“It’s not impostor syndrome because I’ve been on the BBC a quarter of a century. But it is the biggest show on radio. And it’s been done by some of my radio heroes. So there is an element of: I can’t quite believe this is happening to me.”
Whether he’s talking about the royals or a film star in the studio — “I just saw Timothée Chalamet there about two hours ago, it’s bonkers” — Mills has a boyish, rather charming enthusiasm for the radio world that he has found himself inhabiting. When he reflects on 2024, during which he got married (to his partner, Sam Vaughan, a producer) won Celebrity Race Across the World (with his new husband as his team-mate), and was offered the Breakfast gig, he declares it, with straightforward, unironic delight, to have been “the best year of my life!”
Scott Mills: “I don’t really have an ego per se. Just to work in radio was enough for me”
STEWART WILLIAMS
Mills may be the nicest man on the radio. It is hard to find a negative word written about him. Not everyone wants niceness, of course. And Mills is probably a safe pair of hands for the BBC rather than a dazzling talent who is going to bring in a huge new audience. But millions of people enjoy what he does and his relatability is probably a large part of his appeal.
We are talking in one of the studios in Broadcasting House from where he will watch the dawn come up over the capital. He is a ball of nervous energy, constantly shifting position in his office chair, spinning round in it to see what colleagues are doing on the other side of the glass wall, sometimes standing up and moving about before hopping back into it.
Since the age of eight, when he started pretending to be a radio DJ by “broadcasting” in his playroom to his mum using three cheap cassette recorders, his life has been radio. He discovered that if he went up a hill near Winchester he could hear Capital Radio: “From London, how exciting!”
From the age of 16 he worked in local radio, first in Hampshire, then in Bristol and at Piccadilly Radio in Manchester before joining Radio 1 in 1998 to present the early breakfast show and then other slots.
“I don’t really have an ego per se. Just to work in radio was enough for me. I was ecstatic to get through the door somewhere.” He would have been quite content if he hadn’t moved beyond Manchester, he says.
His mother, Sandra, who has often appeared on his shows, has said he was shy. “I still am really. A lot of radio presenters are quite shy. Not ready for the limelight. I didn’t factor in that you might be a bit famous because that was never the intention. There was no social media. I remember thinking, the only time they’re going to see you is if you get to do Top of the Pops.”
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In the early days he had panic attacks. “My mum still says, ‘You’re really good at it, but I think you might be in the wrong job.’ I’ve got used to it now. I still get a little wave [of anxiety] every now and again. I’m just an anxious person. I used to suffer terribly with it and I seem to be able to handle it better now. I make sure that I have time to sleep and relax.”
He once nearly lost his job at Radio 1 after staying up drinking after the Brit awards and slurring in his early breakfast show. “That was the 90s,” he says. “If you’d seen me in my twenties and thirties, I was like the Duracell Bunny. I could not relax.”
You still seem to have quite a lot of energy, I say, as he fidgets in his chair. “It’s just nervous energy. I know how to wind down now.”
Last summer he married Sam in Spain, in front of guests including Zoe Ball, Rylan Clark and the singer Sam Ryder. Pixie Lott and Calum Scott provided musical entertainment. He seems genuinely puzzled that a paparazzo turned up outside. “That blew my mind, and it really blew Sam’s mind. There was a breaking news alert. That’s ridiculous. That’s what happens to the Beckhams, not me.”
In Hampshire a motorway bridge bears his name. “What a way to be remembered. Long after I’m gone, the bridge that connects north and southbound M3 near Fleet is named after me,” he says, displaying a sense of irony, though it is not as highly developed as it was in the master of the Breakfast Show, Sir Terry Wogan, who he regards as “the best to ever do it”. He also believes Chris Evans is a “genius” when it comes to new radio ideas.
He started listening to Wogan at his grandparents’ house, where they hung on the broadcaster’s every word. Eventually he worked with Wogan once, on Comic Relief. “I was sat as close as we are now, and my hand was literally like that,” he says, making it shake wildly. “Oh my God! It’s Terry Wogan! But he was so kind and I’m so glad I got to meet him. I remember exactly where I was when I found out that he’d died. I was devastated. I was in northern Sweden. It was like I’d lost a family member. That’s what radio can do. I didn’t know him, but I felt like I did.”
Wogan used to say that the most important thing in life was kindness. “He’s right. But I think for a while it wasn’t in vogue. Radio and TV went through a stage in the 90s of being a bit mean.”
When I suggest that in an age of social media anger people see Radio 2, which is listened to by almost a quarter of the population, as a sanctuary, he nods vigorously. “And it must be protected at all costs,” he says emphatically. “People don’t mind a bit of fun. But you’ve got to be the nice warm person that you actually are.”
Mills with his husband, Sam Vaughan, and cavapoo, Teddy
PAUL STUART FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
Over Christmas he was in panto in Swansea and a woman appeared at the stage door and told him he had been there through all the landmarks, good and bad, in her life. “That’s what I love about radio and why it will never die and will never be taken over by robots. It’s that one-on-one communication which computers cannot replicate.”
Growing up he adored and studied Steve Wright, who died last year. “A lot of radio is making something out of nothing on a dreary January day. Steve Wright did that effortlessly every single day. And what I loved, and I hope that I also have this skill, is that he made it sound so big and glossy.”
Mills has a super-soft interviewing style, but sometimes that gets results. Recently Janet Jackson told him that Stevie Wonder, Tracy Chapman and Samuel L Jackson were all her cousins. “I must’ve put her at ease somehow.”
Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith and Robbie Williams are among those he has got to know well. “They’ll walk in and be like, ‘Scott, hey!’ I’m on that level with them, that definitely helps.”
There was once a “dodgy” interview with Katy Perry, when she came into the studio and he pranked her by bringing in a Russell Brand lookalike at a time, it later became clear, when they were splitting up. She stormed off. But she was back on his show recently “and we had such fun”.
He has also seen the dark side of celebrity life. He got to know One Direction very well and paid a heartbroken tribute to Liam Payne on air when he died after a fall from a hotel balcony in Argentina. The tribute was circulated on the family’s WhatsApp group and Mills spoke to Payne’s father Geoff at the funeral. “I’ve known his dad as long as they were famous and just to see him that day, there’s nothing that you can say. If [the tribute] provided a source of any comfort, then I’m beyond honoured. It was absolutely horrendous.”
He inherits from Zoe Ball a show that ran on her brand of fun mum energy. His show will include lots of calls from the public. “I like the feeling that the listeners are kind of running the show. You get a real snapshot of what the UK is doing.”
I wonder if he has an ideal listener in mind when he speaks into the microphone. On that trip to Radio 1 Prince William said he used to text in to shows using a different name. Surely he too should have graduated to Radio 2 by now.
“I would hope so,” Mills says. “Let’s find out! He should be my first caller.”