On her BBC Radio 2 show tonight from 7-9pm, Jo Whiley celebrates ‘Christmas with Chris Martin’ where she is joined by the Coldplay frontman to co-host the show with festive chat and Chris playing his favourite yuletide tunes.
On Christmas
Jo: Are you excited about Christmas?
Chris: I’m excited about life in general, just to be here… My kids’ mum and my partner are really good at it [Christmas] so I just pay for what I’m told to pay for. That’s it, yeah [laughs]
Jo: What do you do on Christmas Eve?
Chris: I love Christmas Eve. The routines I have are the ones I had when I was like 7… I make sure that Santa or Father Christmas as we call him, that the access is good for him and all clear and he’s got the right snacks and stuff lined up… Nowadays I leave some sort of pastry goods and a glass of something with alcohol in it and always he eats it and drinks it and also he often leaves footprints if we happen to be somewhere with a fireplace, often in the morning he’s left a footprint.
On East 17 and Take That tracks
Chris: Just then I was thinking, if I had to choose between Stay Another Day and Back For Good I don’t know which I’d do. I bow at the altar of both of them, they’re both pretty special. Stay Another Day is a Christmas song… a perfect song to me.
On Rihanna
Chris: She’s my favourite singer in the world.
Jo: What do you love about her the most?
Chris: Everything.
On doing another Christmas song
Chris: No… I feel like for us we did one and we really love it, unless something naturally happens. We wrote a Christmas song for Kylie, but I don’t think anyone really liked it…. I don’t think it was a dud, but one of those ones that went by the wayside… I don’t think it caught anyone’s imagination, which is fine.
What are your plans for this Christmas?
Chris: I don’t know, I’m waiting to be told where to be.
Jo: Will you be with your kids?
Chris: Yes, I would walk through fire to be with those people. They’re old and grown, but they’re still cool.
On not being able to cook
Chris: I’m not a great cooked. I’ve cooked twice in the last 10 years and both times the Fire Brigade came and I’d like to send a shout out to them in North London Fire Department who’ve saved me twice. The second time they came and said ‘have you been cooking again?’
Jo: What did you burn?
Chris: Um, er, pasta and toast because I said I’d cook dinner, but then I got distracted and went to work on a song and then forgot until, anyway!
On being asked to leave a choir
Chris: I was asked to leave a choir, but it was all meant to be. I had a teacher at the time who in my school report said I misbehaved in music class and that would be excusable if I had even a modicum of talent. That’s what he said. I promise, yeah. But that was a blessing because it lit the fire.
He ends the show with this message for listeners
Chris: We should end by saying it’s been an amazing year on the Jo Whiley show. We thank you for your listenership, we hope you’re ok, we send you all our love. We hope your Christmas is good. Don’t worry about all the difficult relatives, everyone has them. Don’t worry about the depression that might come the day after of something – that’s normal, you have to have the lows to have the highs. Don’t forget to watch Back To The Future. Always listen to Ella Fitzgerald once, but preferably twice. We love you. Jo loves you. Merry Christmas.
A Merry Christmas to you!
You can listen back in full to it on BBC Sounds.
You can view the original article HERE.
