Nick Grimshaw

Name:	Nick Grimshaw
Also Known As:	Grimmy, G-Money, Nick GrimClaw
Occupation:	BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show presenter, TV personality, DJ
Medium:	Radio and TV
Works:	The Radio 1 Breakfast Show with Nick Grimshaw Sweat the Small Stuff
Official Website(s):	Twitter Instagram
Fan Website(s):
On Fanlore:	Related pages

Nick Grimshaw, aka Grimmy, (born Aug 14, 1984) is an English media personality. He is best known for hosting BBC Radio 1's Breakfast Show (September 24, 2012 - August 9, 2018) and Drivetime show (starting September 2018), hosting Sweat The Small Stuff (April 2013 - December 2014) and for being a close friend to One Direction's Harry Styles. He is an out gay man.

Nick is part of Radio 1 RPF fandom and often appears in One Direction canon and fanon.

Public personna

Nick's public personna is that of a workaholic and social butterfly, with a wide and varied social circle. He frequently shows up on best dressed lists.

He lives in London and is a dog lover. As of 2021, his canine companions were Pig Dog and Stinky Blob. He previously had a dog named Puppy who died in a household accident in 2014.

See wikipedia for more canon details.

The best clips from the Radio 1 Breakfast Show are archived by Magog83.

Presence in fanworks

Nick's fandom presence mostly centers around his links to 1D. In fanworks he often appeared as a side character: a full half of stories using the character tag "Nick Grimshaw" were tagged with the Larry Stylinson relationship tag (as of March 2021).

When shipped, Nick is most often paired with 1D band members.

As of March 2020:

• Nick/Harry, or Gryles, was the most popular ship involving him, with 1508 works posted to AO3. These works frequently featured the pairing as a background ship in endgame Larry Stylinson stories: excluding the Harry/Louis relationship from the Nick/Harry tag removed a third of the results, leaving 1081 -- although it is possible that some stories actually featured a Nick/Harry endgame, with Harry/Louis as a background relationship.

• Nick/Louis, or Tomlinshaw, was the second most popular ship, with 1080 works posted to AO3., and 954 works when excluding the Harry/Louis relationship tag.

Other ships included: Grincham, which pairs Nick up with Breakfast Show producer Matt Fincham; anecdotal ships with various BBCR1 colleagues, other 1D members or other personalities such as Nelgar, pairing Nick with GQ fashion editor Elgar Johnson; threesome or OT3 ships often involving Nick, Harry Styles, and one of their common acquaintances such as other 1D members, Ben Winston, Taylor Swift, Caroline Flack, or Daisy Lowe.

Relationship with One Direction fandom

While One Direction was active, Nick was an ardent supporter of the band and gave its fandom some of its favorite interviews .

However, his relationship with some One Direction fans, especially Larry tinhats, has at times been complicated.

His closeness to Harry Styles and alleged "feud" with Louis Tomlinson prompted reactions ranging from mild dislike to homophobic slurs and online death threats. He was often accused of owing his rise to success only to his connexion to Harry Styles and of being disingenuous in his friendship, "using" Harry for his fame. See for example this exchange between former Tumblr user tamponimpalaa and ziusik:

tamponimpalaa:

ok I’m sorry to anyone who loves Nick grimshaw and I have nothing against you or whatever but, I literally canNOT stand him. He literally feeds off of being Harry’s friend. apart from people who originally listened to his radio show, who really knew who he was? Like im pretty sure most people heard about him through Harry. I know I did. i just think he takes to being harry’s friend as his “rise to fame”. (...)

ziusik:

OKAY. I NEVER do this, because it’s not worth it, but let me first ask you: are you British? Because I am pretty sure you are not. I’m not, either, but I at least research things, so let’s break this down:

1) Nick has been a fixture of British pop television/radio since about 2007. Before One Direction were anywhere NEAR a twinkle in Simon’s eye.

2) He has hosted MULTIPLE shows over the years, such as T4, Switch with Annie Mac (a pretty legendary DJ herself at this point), Freshly Squeezed. He’s had a career longer than any of the 1D boys have been famous, and definitely since before they were famous enough to be “used” for fame. He’s been KNOWN since then. IN HIS COUNTRY, WHERE HE WAS A DJ/VIDEO HOST.

3) His friendship with Harry has been more beneficial for HARRY, who has been accepted into London’s ~inner circle~ and become a fixture in the fashion scene, at least, thanks to Nick. Nick is the one with all those connections. NOT Harry. (...)

On the other hand, some of the Larry believers thought his friendship with Harry made him a prime source to confirm that "Larry is real." See for example Nick's Nov 5, 2011 tweet quoting Harry:

"i might come out tonight, maybe not though" @Harry_Styles, Philosopher, November 2010

The tweet became a staple of 'Larry proof' posts, such as this one:

November 4-5th were epic days on Twitter for Harry where, for all intents and purposes, he outed himself for a brief period of time, and then an outing was heavily hinted at by Nick Grimshaw the next night.

Another instance of this phenomenon is the fake TMZ article which emerged on social media circa July 14, 2014[1], meant to depict an interview in which Nick Grimshaw confirmed that Harry Styles was gay and Larry was, indeed, real:

• 

  Page 1. The photoshopped headline: "Boom! Nick Grimshaw Admits Harry Styles is Gay?!"

• 

  Page 2. Note the suspiciously awkward and unprofessional phrasing: "Nicholas Grimshaw showed himself angry during an interview for a huge magazine because of an indelicate question of the journalist."

The graphic prompted the hilarity of many fans. However, a number of Larry believers fell for it, and took to Twitter to offer thanks or ask for confirmation.

Thus, on any given day, Nick's Twitter mentions and Tumblr tag might have been equally full of abuse from fandom and non-fandom haters and/or homophobes. Such instances led to weariness among Nick fans, as exemplified by the humorous bio of the Nick Grimshaw news Twitter account:

We venture into Nick's @/s so you don't have to.

Tropes

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

Fanwork characterizations of Nick shifted somewhat over the years, reflecting comments that he has made about himself in interviews.

Early Nick/Harry fics sometimes built on Nick’s perpetual singleness and cast Nick as flighty, insecure, or not ready for commitment, for example in junkshopdisco's The Miseducation of Harry Styles, where Nick attempts to break up with Harry by telling him, "The thing you have to realise about DJs (...) is we all go batshit. Like, you can delay the onset of batshit by avoiding the nastier narcotics and never, ever buying a Toto album, but ultimately it comes for us all.”

Later fics flipped this characterization and made Nick more secure in his own needs and desires in a steady relationship, sometimes at odds with the career/desires of the bandmember he was paired with.

Nick was generally portrayed as an ambitious, sensitive, kind person who was at times wildly neurotic, anxious and self-deprecating. He was often written as a bit lonely, pining for someone, or struggling to make relationships work. See for example If This Is Love, by sunsetmog.

Villain!Nick

As a result of his at times antagonistic relationship with elements of the 1D fandom, Nick Grimshaw was frequently demonized in fanworks, especially of the badfic type. This was typical of fannish character bashing. This trope was widely condemned as a sad repetition of the homophobic "gay men as predators" stereotype.

He was sometimes be depicted as an abuser or as the reason Harry and Louis could not be together, for example as a protagonist in infidelity plotlines.

Temporary relationships or unrequited feelings

Nick sometimes features in background pairings that have been or will be broken up in order for other pairings to become endgame, or acts as a conduit for two other characters to realize their true love, for example in becka and mediaville's Promise Not To Stop When I Say When, in which Nick brings Louis into his relationship with Harry before taking himself out of the equation.

He might also be written as having unresolved/unrequited feelings for a member of the main pairing, for example in magneticwave's it's you i find like a ghost in my mind, a Soulmates!AU where Harry is meant for Nick but chooses Louis.

Some fans have questioned the underlying message and effect of the plot device, which fits within a wider fandom trend of using and/or passing up a canon queer character in order for two seemingly straight characters to end up together (see for example the debates around promoting Sterek over representation of canon queer character Danny Mahealani in Teen Wolf fandom).^{[citation needed]}

The clique

Because of Nick's wide and active social circle in canon, fanworks which focus on him often depicted him as an extremely sociable protagonist and included an array of recurring minor characters. In fic, his mates were often depicted as more level-headed than him about relationships and could be instrumental in getting the main characters together, in a way acting as a proxy for the reader.

The clique includes, but is not limited to: Henry Holland, Gillian Orr, Kate Moss, Alexa Chung, Aimee Phillips, Rita Ora, Pixie Geldof, Colette Cooper, Miquita Oliver, Daisy Lowe, Florence Welch, and Radio 1 colleagues Matt Fincham, Ian Chaloner, Fiona Hanlon, and LMC.

Nick and kids

Canon statements and fandom's desire for domestic happy endings have resulted in numerous fanworks where Nick interacts with/takes care of children, often his own, such as kidfic. For example: waspabi, All of it singing, Nick/Harry domestic future!fic; ihavea1dbloghelp, Gryles kidfic, Single father!Nick meets Harry; crucio, untitled Tumblr picture set, collage of Nick and Harry with small children; blamefincham, untitled Tumblr picspam, a masterlist of Nick+children pictures.

Alternate Universes

Nick’s fanon identity is so tied up in his radio work that in Alternate Universe fanworks where other characters do completely noncanon work, Nick often still works in radio, as a DJ, or in College AUs, studies radio or music.

See Accio My Heart by waspabi - even in a Harry Potter fusion, Nick loves and eventually works in radio.

Other AUs have included Nick working in fashion somehow, which is a canon interest of his. For example: (Podfic) Nowhere Better Than This Place by ofjustimagine.

Example fanworks

• First AO3 fic featuring Nick: I Used to Think We Were Forever by mrsyt31, Nick/Harry, posted August 22, 2012.
• First AO3 fic with the Nick Grimshaw character tag: It's Fine, Really by fortymaliks, Nick/Harry, posted August 29, 2012.
• Most hit AO3 fic featuring Nick in the main pairing: I Had Rather Hear My Dog Bark At A Crow by sunsetmog, Nick/Louis, posted January 4, 2014.

More example fanworks:

• gif fanart by stealthnugget, originally posted in 2012.
• There Is No Downtime by tilda, Nick/Harry, posted March, 19, 2013 + podfic by greedy_dancer, posted December 22, 2013.
• Sweat the Small Stuff gif by gayathrik1611, posted May 3, 2013 (502,703 notes as of Sept 6, 2014).
• An Abridged Sexual History of Nick Grimshaw: A Love Story by mrsronweasley, Nick/Harry, Nick/OMC, Nick/Jonny, Nick/Matt Richardson, Nick/Henry Holland, posted July 7, 2013 + podfic by ofjustimagine, posted December 17, 2013.
• Chilipshaw by teaboytoaliens, Nick/Ian Chaloner/Aimee Phillips, posted March 2, 2014.
• Apocalypse Song by waspabi, Nick/Harry, posted April 19, 2014.