After reports that Top Gear's new star host was struggling to work more than four hours a day on set, new rumors are popping up that he's taking out his frustrations on the staff of his hit radio show on BBC Radio 2. The reasons, of course, are the same as before – rising at the crack of dawn five days a week to host a radio show from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and then immediately departing to work on a television show is hard. Doubly so when you're the driving force in both enterprises.
"The Radio 2 show is the country's most popular. But Chris is turning up exhausted and miserable and his staff have noticed a huge difference. Top Gear's a full-time job, but Radio 2 involves waking at dawn every day. It's probably no surprise he seems close to breaking point," a source at the BBC told The Sun.
In one incident behind the scenes of his radio show, Evans allegedly yelled "so viciously that [a] producer was reduced to tears and an engineer had to tell him to stop."
The BBC has, naturally, denied all of this. According to The Sun, Director of Studios Mark Linsey and Radio 2 head Bob Shennan issued a statement last saying "Chris has displayed even greater commitment and professionalism," since he started splitting his time between TV and radio.
The Sun's BBC source contradicts that statement, and does so in a truly damning way.
"Chris's ego is out of control and he's behaving far worse than [Jeremy] Clarkson ever did – which is the opposite of what the Top Gear change was meant to create."