'Mum thought drugs led to attack'

Richard Bacon before the attack
The Weekender

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When Richard Bacon enters the Century Club on Shaftesbury Avenue I almost don't recognise him. His face, usually so boyish, is puffed and swollen, particularly beneath the eyes, where two semi-circles of purplishblack have rapidly developed over the past few days.

The skin on his cheeks has a yellowish hue, and his nose, clearly broken, is twice its normal size. His split lip is healing well, but his mouth still looks exceptionally tender. He points to the bruises all over his body: down the arms, the thighs; on his back, his chest, even the inside of his ankle.

Bacon, the DJ and former Blue Peter presenter, was beaten up in a pub toilet last week, in what sounds like a premeditated - and clearly vicious - attack by two men.

Oddly, really oddly, this wasn't some beery scuffle in the small hours of the morning, but a broad-daylight assault not long after 7pm. To make matters worse, he has only just broken up with his girlfriend of seven-and-a-half-years, but more of that later.

The assault happened in the Garrick pub on Charing Cross Road, where Bacon was celebrating his switch from Capital Radio's drive-time show to its equivalent on Xfm, and the end of his first broadcast for the latter station.

It was a pub he knew well. He and his colleagues at both Capital and Xfm are in the habit of winding down at the Garrick after coming off-air (so it's even possible the two men had watched his movements and knew he'd be there).

"I got there at, like, 10 past seven and it wasn't long after that that I went to the toilet, which is downstairs and kind of underground," he says. "These two guys followed me. I wasn't aware of it, but the CCTV footage shows it. One waits outside while the other comes in with me and starts to hit me.

"My first thought was, this is some listener that I've annoyed, but when he carried on hitting me, I thought, well, maybe not, this is a bit extreme. He hit me a lot. And he kicked me a lot.

"I was in a defensive position on the ground, and I kept saying, 'Whatever it is I've done, I'm sorry'. But that didn't seem to get a reaction, so in the end I just screamed for help really loudly, and then he went.

"I went back upstairs where I was with six other people. I had my hands over my face and said, 'I've just been beaten up'. They were like: 'Yeah, whatever' - and then I took my hands away and they could see all this blood and my face was starting to swell, so of course they called the police right away."

Bacon claims nothing hurt at the time, but when he started repeating himself over and over, his friends took him straight to hospital.

"I was trying desperately to crack a joke. I was saying to them, 'Yeah, but I'll tell you what my main concern is ...' - and they all looked around really anxiously - and I said, 'My main concern is whether or not you can get blood out of Paul Smith jeans'.

People kind of laughed feebly, but apparently I was telling this joke every 10 seconds. In fact, I was quite badly concussed." He will need an operation on that nose, too, once the swelling has gone down.

So why the attack? Robbery wasn't the motive, since his mobile and his wallet were left intact.

To some, he might have an irritatingly juvenile manner on-air (to others, of course, he's a perfect sweetie, a little edgier than Theakston or Lucio, his predecessor on Xfm, yet funny and affable, too), but he's no Howard Stern.

In any case, who gets so riled by a radio presenter that they'll actually lie in wait to beat him up?

For a while, Bacon has been jokily banging on about the 4x4 he drives, but surely eco-warriors don't use their fists. It wasn't a girl thing, he insists, and it absolutely wasn't a drugs thing.

"I had to ring my mum and tell her, so she rang my sister and said: 'I think Richard's been beaten up over a drugs debt.' I had to ring her up again and say: 'Mum, could you stop being stupid.'"

But why would she instantly jump to that conclusion? "It's a mum conclusion. Probably because of that previous incident."

By which he means, of course, the "cocaine incident", where a former acquaintance shopped him to the News of the World in 1998 for taking cocaine while employed by the BBC as a Blue Peter presenter.

He was, you'll remember, sacked from the programme in a blaze of publicity - which has since done his career nothing but good.

He is fun and chatty company, but today, with his sore nose and bruised body, Bacon takes a while to warm up. The best way he knows to deal with such a fright is to find humour in it.

At the hospital, when the doctor offered his considered assessment of his injuries - "Yes, you've been beaten up" - Bacon quipped: "But you should have seen the other guy."

"It's a pathetic line because the other guy was totally unmarked, but it gave me such enormous pleasure to say it. It's one of those things you wait your whole life to say."

I'm still intrigued by his mum's supposition. Bacon is from middle-class stock in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire - his dad is a solicitor - where he went to a minor public school. I suspect his parent worry dreadfully about his lifestyle in London (though, actually, I don't think they need to).

Does he take drugs now? It would be easier to admit nowadays, as a DJ for Xfm, where, presumably, standards of personal behaviour aren't set quite so high as on kids' TV.

"Yeah, it would be less of a contentious issue, I guess, but no, I don't. And you know the drugs I've taken in the past have been on a very occasional recreational basis, which is obviously a bad thing and not good for you but not enough to get you beaten up over ... In the past, when I did do it, it was stuff someone else gave me. I don't think I've ever paid for it."

There's something ever-so-honest about Bacon. In a business where you expect at least some dissembling, he is almost naively frank. He admits that he never felt completely at home on Capital, for example, where he was a little too madcap for the afternoon audience of mums and cabbies.

It was his idea to transfer his show to Xfm - part of the same independent radio group as Capital - where the music, the demographic and the opportunity for jokes all suit him better.

He has big plans for the show, including a weekly "event" in the last half-hour on a Friday afternoon - either live music or a special guest.

Ricky Gervais, McAlmont and Butler and The Fratellis are already signed up, as is Tory leader David Cameron, who clearly intends to get down with the kids and may yet expand on his love of indie music.

Turning 30 late last year has also been a watershed for Bacon. "You get to a stage where you recognise that you could approach your career with a bit more maturity," he says.

He has started to ask himself all the big questions: "Where is my career going, when should I start a family, am I living in the right place?"

This is why he's so much better suited to Xfm, since Capital's audience have, by and large, left those questions behind them. Plus, as already mentioned, he's just split up with his girlfriend, Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq. Though they met on the show, they only started dating once he left it.

"We split up four weeks ago," he says, "and it still feels a bit raw. It wasn't a bad split, not a shouting split. I mean, it wasn't her who beat me up ... There were just a few things we knew about each other that made us think perhaps we weren't entirely compatible in the long term.

"You do get to an age where, if you're not 100 per cent certain, you realise you have to crack on and find someone else. We still love each other, though, and we get on really well. I mean, it does feel like the right thing, but in a lot of ways it's been difficult.

"We didn't actually live together, but she stayed round at my house a lot and, you know, it's been hard going back to a completely empty place. The exchange of possessions hasn't happened yet. She still has a wardrobe of clothes at my house."

This sounds sadder than he appears actually to be. Trailing around M&S looking for dinners-for-one has so far been the nadir - though the break-up has also been the cause of yet more parental worry.

"My dad always said Konnie was a calming influence on me, and I think she always did keep me on the straight and narrow. I used to wonder what I'd be like if we split up. But now I think I can probably keep myself on the straight and narrow. I don't think I need armbands or stabilisers."

As for the thugs who beat him up, well, the police have exceptionally good CCTV footage. The Garrick pub, where bags are often stolen, had just installed state-of-the-art digital cameras, and there are a few decent close-ups (though Bacon "isn't expecting to recognise them"). In addition, CID is hoping to get both fingerprints and DNA evidence from the pint glasses used by the men.

Like the trouper he has often proved himself to be, Bacon still intends to drink at the pub, though he may need a mate to go to the loo with him the first time he ventures back.

By which time, let's hope, he'll also have his handsome face back - and can finally raise a glass to an interesting career-inprogress.

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