Friday night saw Jonathan Ross quit the BBC as his very last show aired to the public. Jackie Chan, Mickey Rourke and ‘dishy’ David Beckham joined him for his swan song.

I was particularly delighted as David Beckham proceeded to tell Jonathan an anecdote about calling his good friend James Corden, whilst living in Milan, to tell him that he was sitting down and making the Taj Mahal in Lego, to which James apparently replied ‘I’m sitting in a hotel room thinking.......should I have a shower?’ The crazy lives these celebs really live eh!??

The up side of all this was that having met James Corden last week, was surely akin to having touched David Beckham himself? No?

I have to clear one thing up straight away as I have since found out that James was actually born in Buckinghamshire, so I clearly win the clash of the Essex Titans by default. James had had himself a bit of a ‘shop up' in Selfridges before arriving at our studio - no doubt acquiring some new clobber for his holiday, or maybe some more Lego kits for bessie mate David Beckham to play with. Bless.

James was very pleasant but quite clearly desperate for the loo as that was all he kept asking me on arrival to the studio. Once shown the path he literally dashed past at warp speed not allowing me to get out of the way first, thus creating a rather embarrassing tummy to tummy fiasco between me and the self named ‘chunky unit’.

I decided then and there that that was as much contact as James and I needed and passed over the camera – and all responsibility - to Chris so that he could get the attached snap. Rabbit in headlights anyone? – maybe James was still a little shocked at his close encounter of the toilet kind!

This week VOX Towers was visited by the UK’s answer to the late great Don LaFontaine.....Mr Redd Pepper.

Redd is a voice actor notable for his work providing theatrical trailers for movies such as Amistad, The Blair Witch Project, Men in Black and Boogie Nights.

He came to prominence following his voice-over work for Armageddon and Independence Day when he was actually mistaken for said Hollywood voice artist LaFontaine.

Recent work includes a long-standing relationship with The Chris Moyle’s Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 1, where Pepper provides idents and voiceovers for various segments of the show.

We are proud to call Redd one of the friends of A1 and due to his smooth, strong and unnaturally deep resonance he is very much in demand. Redd was actually discovered as he drove trains on the London underground. Being the cheeky chappie that he is, Redd would often have a bit of a joke at the passengers’ expense. One such time he turned all the lights off in the carriages and using his trademark deep and spooky voice he said ‘This is your driver speaking............or is it?’ What a cad.

It was during one such impromptu performance in 1996 that a TV executive happened to be on board. The rest, as they say, is history.

We were very honoured this week as the European President of Christie’s Mr Jussi Pylkkanen came into our studio to record an interview. After much fussing, special coffee making and biscuit searching Jussi arrived and straight off the bat he recognised the lovely Lucy Scott from our in house team.

So all that fretting was for nothing as Jussi and Lucy had a good old chinwag, just like old friends meeting in the high street. Our Lucy does tend to know a varying assortment of people and even went to the opening of parliament this year and saw the Queen, so I guess it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise to find out that her and Jussi are very good pals – what an asset to have in the Green Room eh!

Soho News:

SHOCK news for Bastille Day – The French House is going Italian!!!!


Noel and Lesley Botham, landlords of the legendary Soho watering hole which was the informal HQ of the Free French during the second World war, told regulars last week that the upstairs restaurant is to be taken over by Russell Norman, who introduced cichetti – or Venetian tapas – to London via his nearby Soho success story, Polpo.

I have been to Polpo and thoroughly recommend it. It has an ace rustic and atmospherically busy ambience and though you often have to linger by the bar to be seated it is well worth the wait, especially if you order one of the carafes of vino and nosh on the crudités and dips on offer. Eccellente!

The French’s 28-seater dining room is to be renamed Polpetto – Italian for baby octopus.

De Gaulle wrote his seminal wartime speech calling for his countrymen to keep alive “the flame of the French resistance” in the bar, so as Polpetto opens on August 23rd, one can only assume that General de Gaulle will be spinning in his garlic infested grave. Mon Dieur!

Join us next week for more thrills and spills from your Number 1, A1, Studio. Until then keep it loquacious and delicious darrrrrlings!