Alan Brazil goes AWOL with emergency presenter forced to step in for coverage of final day of Cheltenham

TALKSPORT listeners were stunned that Chris Evans stepped in as host of the breakfast show... after Alan Brazil went AWOL.

Brazil was due to present the show on the final day of the Cheltenham Festival.

But in bizarre scenes, the former Manchester United and Tottenham forward simply did not appear - the day after bumping into the glamorous Emma Louise Jones.

And that saw Virgin Radio's Evans make an emergency transfer to fill in at the last minute.

talkSPORT's Jamie O'Hara was less than impressed about Brazil's absence.

He wrote on X: "Waking up to a Alan Brazil no show is exactly the start of the day I needed.

"I’ll see if I can find him at Cheltenham later on today, shambles from the big man."

Evans was down the corridor from the talkSPORT studios ready to present his breakfast show on Virgin Radio.

However, the talkSPORT producers suddenly asked him to take over the sports station.

Evans, decked out in a white long-sleeve top and Red Bull Racing cap, made the seamless transition.

And he made an early appeal for listeners to look out for the burly Scot.

Evans said: "Well has he made it? Ermm, no is the answer, not thus far at least.

"I'm really sorry about this talkSPORT massive but it's Chris Evans here from Virgin Radio."

Evans then explained the situation and how he had planned to do his 90s throwbacks on his regular show.

The former Top Gear and The One Show host added: "He's a proper no-show today, missing in action.

"So if you have seen Alan Brazil in the last 24 hours, where have you seen him, where was the sighting, what time was it as well?

"If you don't know what you're looking for, Alan Brazil is robust by nature and robust by character.

"Also missing in action this morning, we've got Ray 'Party' Parlour, he's nowhere to be seen, we haven't seen Dean 'Deano' Saunders for a while, Ally 'Goldenballs' McCoist, no, he's nowhere to be seen either.

"So if you see any of these characters, we need to know where they are because they need to be back here on the show."

Brazil was supposed to be on air from 6am until 10am live from Cheltenham on Gold Cup day.

Instead, Evans hosted the first 15 minutes of the talkSPORT show.

But by 6.30am, he had hot-footed it back to his usual hot seat in time for the start of his programme, starting it by saying: "Welcome to my second breakfast show of the day so far!"

Shebahn Aherne, meanwhile, took over the talkSPORT reins in place of Evans with regular co-hosts Parlour and Saunders alongside her.

At 9.30am, there was still no sign of their colleague as the trio joked Brazil was still in bed and that there was plenty of extra space in the makeshift studio.

Parlour then claimed Brazil texted him at 4.30am in the morning saying he needed a lie-in.

Brazil did eventually surface, admitting he was "cream crackered" after a long week.

He told TalkSPORT: “Listen, I was just cream crackered, really really tired.

“You might say I’ve overdone it, but we did come down Sunday. Normally I just do Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, but this week it was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

“There were some fancy odds with the bookies that I would miss Friday, and when you do your money in the first couple of days you’ve got to get it back, so I backed myself not to do the show today!

“I heard them today, slagging me off on the radio - don’t worry about that. I thought Shebahn did a great job as well.”

Last year, Piers Morgan joked former talkSPORT Breakfast presenter Laura Woods "did an Alan Brazil" when she failed to turn up following her weekend at Glastonbury.