Chris Moyles: BBC gave me no notice Nick Grimshaw was replacing me on Radio 1
Watch: Chris Moyles speaks out about his Radio 1 sacking
Chris Moyles has claimed the BBC gave him no notice he was being replaced by Nick Grimshaw as host for the Radio 1 breakfast show.
The radio DJ - currently starring in I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! - has previously spoken about being unhappy with the way treated by the BBC when he was sacked in 2012 after eight years presenting The Chris Moyles Show.
The 48-year-old presenter has now told Matt Hancock in the jungle: "I was a bit cross after I left… they handled it so badly.
Read more: Chris Moyles says he's 'practising washing my bits in shorts' ahead of I'm A Celeb
"I went in with my agent and the controller and we sit down and he goes, ‘Look, this isn’t very easy, I think it’s time we wrapped the show up. We’re going to announce in the news at half 10 that Nick Grimshaw’s taking over.’
“My agent went, ‘That’s out of order’ and it all got a bit steamy. And I’m like, ‘Both of you calm down, stop.’
"I said to the boss, ‘You can’t do that?!’ He goes, ‘Well if we don’t do that, it’ll get out.’ I said, ‘Well up until 60 seconds ago, I didn’t know about it. So, after 15 years, you can’t do that. I have to announce that I’m coming off the breakfast show and we have to work out what’s happening. This is not a two minute conversation and that’s naughty.’
"So I said ‘Look, trust me, I’ve been here a long time, let me make the announcement and then I’d love to get involved with how we then announce who is going to take over.’
"And they announced it at 10.30am the next morning. We finished at 10am they announced it at 10.30am that Nick was taking over. I was just like, ‘Okay, alright.’"
But Moyles said he had "no regrets" as he firing led to him taking a year off in Los Angeles, where he met his partner Tiffany Austin.
He said: “I decided to take a year off at that point. And that was fun. I went and rented a house in LA for a month, text all my mates that lived there and people I’d got to know going, ‘I’m back in town for 4 weeks, let’s get a coffee, let’s get dinner, let’s go to the pub.’ And I had a little life. And that’s where I met Tiff. She was living there.”
The Radio X DJ the added in the Bush Telegraph: “When you do the breakfast show on Radio 1 you get these amazing opportunities coming your way, but you always know in the back of your head, one day that will finish. So when it did finish, to do the musical, to do my own tour, and then meet my future girlfriend - then my life changed entirely. So, no regrets, all happy, it’s been a good journey so far.”
Moyles starred as King Herod in the arena tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar in 2013.
He dubbed himself the "saviour of Radio 1" after growing his audience figures from a debut of 5.93 million in 2004 to a high of 7.9 million at the beginning of 2010.
When Grimshaw took over from Moyles, ratings - which had already begun to decline - continued to fall.
Read more: Nick Grimshaw quits BBC Radio One after 14 years
Grimshaw hosted the Radio 1 Breakfast show from 2012 to 2018, when he was replaced by Greg James.