Neil Fox: "I sometimes try and sing songs in an operatic style, very loudly, driving through Sloane Square in the morning”

Since 2005, Neil Fox has been the host of Magic Breakfast - a weekday radio show between 5am and 9am on Magic FM, which according to the show's host "plays amazing music, lots of it". As one of London's most popular radio stations, the show has big things planned for 2012 and Foxy reckons the team are in good shape to keep the figures "growing, growing and growing". Here's what he had to say when we spoke to him after one of his shows.

How did today's breakfast show go?

Today was extremely good fun. I think we had all come in after a nice weekend and we ended up having lots of silly things that were making us laugh.

What is your morning routine? I guess because you have to get up earlier you have lunch and dinner earlier, too?

Yeah, it's 10am and I'm about to have lunch now. No, weirdly I think that's one of these strange things with any breakfast presenter - when do you eat? What is your routine? I don't tend to go to bed too early. But I clearly don't burn the candle too much, otherwise I'll be dead. You do have to be careful, but you don't want to not go out, otherwise you become a very boring person - you have nothing to talk about. I still want to have a fun, great life, which I do, but I'm probably in bed by about 10:30 or 10:45, most nights.

I've ridden Harleys [Davidsons] for 25 years. I find it's a nice way to start my day. Driving through town, even in the middle of winter, I love it - it makes me feel happy. I can sing my heart out, warming my voice up like a right old nutter. I sometimes try and sing songs in an operatic style, very loudly, driving through Sloane Square in the morning. During the summer, when you get to that lovely stage where the clocks have gone back, so it's obviously lighter, I'll ride to work and the sun will be shining on my bike, and it's 4.45 in the morning. It's like London post-apocalypse. It's all there, it's beautiful and there are no cars on the road. That's really quite gorgeous. I have a lovely route in that takes me down the Embankment, Parliament Square, up Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, then up into Piccadilly Circus - it's like doing a tourist thing every morning. It's beautiful.

I think cities 'come to light' when there's nobody in sight and you can notice things you've never noticed before...

And you can really enjoy it - you don't have to worry so much about the traffic everywhere, and it's gorgeous. I recommend everyone gets up at 5 o'clock in the morning one day just to try it - but I don't think many people will be heeding my advice on that one. Trust me, it's gorgeous.

How did you adjust switching from the regular hours in radio to breakfast hours?

Luckily I've got a makeup that allows me to wake up and be happy. My wife has always said she can never be a breakfast presenter because she hates getting up in the morning. She's just one of these people that take an hour to wake up, and you can't be a breakfast person, doing breakfast radio, if it takes you an hour to wake up in the morning. People don't want to hear us miserable - they want to hear us waking them up.

My excuse for getting up late in the morning is I was born a few days late, so I think my natural body clock means I have to spend another hour and a half in bed before I can actually get up.

I've heard some great excuses in my time, but that probably rates as one of the best. "I was born late so my body is always going to be late every day". But you might be one of these guys who just can't get up early in the morning. When I first met my wife she used to think I was a bit of a freak because I love flying - I've had a helicopter license for 20 years, and so at the weekend - this is pre-kids, clearly - I used to say 'right, let's get up early, come on let's take a ride out on the bike and let's go flying', and she would look at me like I was a nutter. 'It's Saturday, let's have a lie-in', 'no, come on, let's go. Let's not waste the day!' It's still nice being up in the morning, but I do live for my lie-in on a Saturday and Sunday. But a lie-in is probably until 8am max, which is good for me. If I go to bed at 10:30pm, that's nine and a half hours sleep.

That's more than enough.

It's way more - it's almost too much. I think the key for me is I never really have a late, crazy night, anymore. But I'm quite happy with that because even when I was out doing lots of clubs and appearances, I never really liked to be out. I'm certainly not one of those who wants to be out all night. It's just not the way I want to live my life.
I usually feel a lot more productive late at night, and I think there's no harm in lying in as long as you're productive when you are up.

I think as long as you listen to your body, as well. There's no doubt getting up early, lovely as it is sometimes, is not normal - it's not natural to wake up at 4.15. It's the middle of the night - I ride in and there are people coming out of clubs at that time. There's one just off Piccadilly in Mayfair where at 4.45 it's spilling out, and you think 'oh man, I hope you guys haven't got work today'.

That might be a new audience for you...

'Hello Clubbers, how are you?' No, you do have to be careful, and I think the hardest thing is most people wake up in the morning, have breakfast, and head off. I can't wake up and have breakfast because it's all too early. We [the show's team] tend to have breakfast while we're doing the show. We've tried now to be healthy. It's too easy to eat junk, but we wouldn't be very healthy on it. I was very lucky when I was a kid, we had a cooked breakfast every morning before school. And if you have that, you're not hungry until lunch. If you're running out of a house after only having a cup of coffee, you are going to pick and you will stop at Pret on the way in.

How is this year going to plan out for the show?

Doing a breakfast show on a mainly music station is always a hard thing because people know Magic for playing great mellow music. We are the number one radio station in town. The difficult thing is to try to convince people that at breakfast time you should also listen to this radio station. We've been working hard on the show for the last couple of years to get it into a position where it's a great morning listen, it's a great wake up feel good radio station. And I think we've got it into a great shape now with the right team - Verity [co-presenter]; and a great producer, Lord Allotment, we call him; and we've got a great travel girl called Louise. It's a good team on board, we all understand what we're doing and we really get on well and have genuinely a lot of fun doing our show.

Tune into Magic Breakfast with Neil Fox weekdays from 5am to 9am on Magic 105.4 and DAB in Greater London and across the UK at magic.co.uk, Sky 0180, Freeview 715 and Virgin Media 928.