You’ll know George as the channel-roving presenter of various lightweight shows such as ITV1’s The Fashion Show, Big Brother’s Little Brother, or even Celebrity Scissorhands if you dare admit it. You may even have caught his mildly controversial daily radio show on BBC6 Music, a programme loved and loathed in equal measure for its tongue in cheek inanity and take no prisoners style. The best is yet to come of course - just twenty-eight years old and bursting with obvious potential, Lamb’s already been tagged ‘the future of radio’ by The Independent, and named (wrongly) as a possible replacement for one of Jonathan Ross’s vacant slots. Yet to confine him to radio would be a bad thing, not least because he ‘s a rather good looking chap who, given the right vehicle, will melt a multitude of TV hearts. Oh, and he’s a bit of a natty dresser too. Check him out in his navy Margelia cardie and grey flannel slacks. He’s even wearing (quite bravely) white shoes with no socks in November and managing to make it work. 

Paul Tierney: Do you see yourself as bit of a renaissance man George? You’ve certainly got it all going on.

George Lamb: “I don’t see why someone should be exclusively radio or exclusively TV – why can’t you try different things? I grew up watching entertainers cross all genres and I kind of like that. There’s a train of thought which says you should specialise in one thing, but I think that’s just the British way of saying you can’t be too flamboyant or achieve too much. The American mantra about ‘the land of the free’ where anything is possible has always been a bit poo-pooed over here. People are almost riled by success in this country.”

PT: The good thing is, you don’t come across like some desperate TV wannabee.

GL: “I’ve been very lucky coming from a very solid home and having a lot of love and support from my parents, so that gives you the tools to go out there and get what you want in life. I also believe though that you create your own luck and make things happen. So I get up every day and I manifest what I want to happen. It’s been really interesting so far because I haven’t really worked anything out. The telly thing just sort of happened, and I discovered that I was quite good at it. I’d had a career managing bands already, and made lots of money and was very successful when I was young. But I blew it, basically.”

PT: How do you mean, blew it?

GL: “I just took my eye off the ball.”

PT: Are you referring to your time managing Lily Allen?

GL: “No, before that really. I was managing a band called Audio Bullys. We kind of had our fifteen minutes, and we had our window of opportunity, and if we’d jumped through it and nailed it everything may well have been different. But I don’t have any regrets, that’s just what happened that time around, and for whatever reason that’s not the path that was chosen for me. Then I got Lily and we did that record, and then I couldn’t get a deal for her!”

PT:It’s incredible to think that everybody passed up on her first time around, isn’t it?

GL: “Yeah, well, tell me about it. There’s not a major record label boss out there, pretty much, who didn’t meet or listen to Lily’s record, including Smile, and they all passed up on it, for whatever reason. Again, it wasn’t my path, it wasn’t what I was meant to do. I believe in karma – I’ve never done anything bad, I’m not a bad person, but it was mega tough watching it all happen. There’s this little bit of you that feels vindicated and knew it was a number one record, and then there’s another bit of you that’s like, ‘aaagh’, I’ve got no money, I’ve had to sell my house, what am I doing? I’d got used to a certain standard of living through managing the boys, having varying degrees of success but earning reasonable amounts of money. Then my relationship with them deteriorated, because one of them is my best friend and you can’t manage your best friend as I soon found out. But I carried on going to the restaurants and buying the cars and taking the holidays. I had the lifestyle but didn’t have any income. It was a really scary time – I lost my house for God’s sake - but looking back and with the benefit of hindsight I believe you only learn about life when you’re in the troughs, it knocks you into shape.”

PT: So what was the pivotal moment when everything changed?

GL: “I got asked to audition for Channel 4. In fact, I had to audition five times, but they eventually gave me a job. I was probably still hurting a bit from everything that had gone on, and I didn’t really perceive me going in to mainstream television. I was totally convinced it was just a stop-gap until whatever career it was I was going to do. But then I was third or fourth in line to get certain TV jobs, and I wasn’t prepared to take scraps, so I thought, fuck it, I’m going to go out and get a radio job. And that’s what I did.”

PT: You make it sound so easy. Most people have to work for years in hospital radio, and you swan into the BBC and get a plum job straightaway.

GL: “Maybe I am just mega lucky? Maybe those hospital radio people didn’t manifest themselves strongly enough?”

PT: I should imagine it’s an interesting time to work in radio at the moment. Are there any truth in the rumours that you’ve been offered one of Wossie’s vacant positions?

GL: “No, no, they haven’t approached me. To be honest with you, I wouldn’t do it even if they had. I don’t want to stick myself in the firing line – there’s already enough people who’ve got their guns out for me. The BBC’s in a very intense period of scrutinising its output, so now’s not the time to start picking battles.”

PT: Don’t you think we’re living in strange times - with freedom of expression and this new morality completely at odds with each other?

GL: “My view on it is….mmm, let me think about this carefully. I’m in awe of Jonathan – you’ll see in my presenting style that there’s a lot of him in me. You don’t copy somebody unless you think they’re the best. I think he’s the most phenomenal entertainer, someone I’ve watched since I was a kid and thought ‘he’s a fucking dude’. Unfortunately, if you’re taking a massive salary, a salary that could fund thousands of people’s lives, there’s got to be a bit of humility in there. Even though what he said was tongue in cheek and kind of classic off the cuff Jonathan Ross, he really, really made a rod for his own back that day. Do you remember when he asked David Cameron if he ever wanked off over Margaret Thatcher? You don’t ask the Leader of the Opposition something like that on national television. Use your fucking loaf. I think his card was definitely marked after that.”

PT: So, ‘Manuelgate’ – was it funny, or was it totally unacceptable?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
GL: “I don’t think you can phone people up and tell them you’ve fucked their granddaughter, I don’t think that’s cool. I’d be really upset if someone called my granny up.”

PT: Okay, let’s change the subject. You seemed to enjoy picking out clothes for the shoot earlier. What’s your take on fashion?

GL: I love it. I’ve always been interested in the way I dress. I’ve not always got it right but I always had a definite sense of what I like to wear. When I was thirteen I used to tell my mum not to iron my shirts, and I started washing my own clothes because I didn’t want anyone else messing with them.

PT: That was back in 1992. What look were you sporting?

GL: Chipie was the first big brand that I became aware of. I remember asking for a pair of limited edition blue corduroys one Christmas, and then they got nicked at school and I was traumatised. From that, I got into Reebok Classics and Ralph Lauren - I suppose what would be considered chavvy now, quite footbally. Then I came out of that, got a bit hippie for a bit when I was skint, and started wearing kaftans, grew my hair and wore loads of beads. I liked it. After that I sort of joined the black skinny jeans mob for a while, until one day I found myself in Carolina Herrera’s shop in Barcelona. I was sick of wearing black, and everything in there was a mass of different colours. I was living in Shoreditch at the time and nu-rave was just blossoming. The clothes were really, really strong colours – very expressive clothing – the first real scene that had come along in a long time. But I was a bit old for nu-rave so I started to do nu-prep.”

PT: You mean, like Kanye West?

GL: “A bit Kanye-ish. Me and my mate were doing preppy stuff, but the cut on preppy stuff is no good, it’s too boxy. So everything was quite tailored, using a lot of pastels, and blues and pinks and yellows and all the rest if it - going a bit St Tropez on acid and putting loads of palettes together that didn’t necessarily work. I had lemon trousers and a very pale violet suit jacket. Then I’d wear a massively high-collared Vivienne Westwood blue and white stripy jacket. I looked nuts, basically.”

PT: What’s this I hear about you having shares in a tailor?

GL: “Because I get everything altered (Lamb is 6’4’), I met an amazing alterations tailor who was having a bit of a rough time where he was working. My dad (actor Larry Lamb, otherwise know as Gavin’s dad in Gavin & Stacey or Archie Mitchell in Eastenders) knows about being out of work and he always told me to make sure I had a few bread and butter businesses on the go for rainy days. I was lucky enough to have a bit of money, so I set up ‘My Beautiful Tailor’. We’re going to a made to measure range because this guy is just the most exquisite alterations tailor - he does all of Alexander McQueen’s and Marc Jacobs’ contracts.”

PT: How important is fashion in the great scheme of things, though? Can you take it or leave it?

GL: “Yeah, I can take it or leave it. There’s nothing really I am absolutely in love with. I don’ t live and breathe music, I don’t live and breath art. It must be wonderful for you if you find that.”

PT: But in an ideal world, and with the right budget, where would you be grazing?

GL: “I’m very fortunate in that I get a budget from work and I shop at the shops I want to shop in. I’m not massively into cars or have an extensive art collection, but if I spend money, it’s on dinner and clothes.”

PT: Do you even know how much your cardigan cost?

GL: “Absolutely no idea. Why does dinner cost so much sometimes? It’s just fucking fish and vegetables. But things cost what they cost. I could go and get a cheaper cardigan, but I like this one: it’s comfortable, it feels nice and warm and the wool’s really thick. It doesn’t say Margelia on it anywhere.”

PT: Apart from the giveaway stitches on the back…

GL: Well we can cut them out if you want. My step-mother was really posh, proper ‘ra-ra’, and she used to think all labels were “terribly vulgar”, so she’d cut them out with scissors. She even cut off the crocodiles from my Lacoste polo shirts once. I was devastated!

PT.

George Lamb is on BBC 6 Music Radio, Monday to Friday between 10am and 1pm.

Special thanks to Bistrotheque.