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SOFA SECRETS
Bruce Willis was bonkers. Pamela Anderson fled the set. The One Show hosts Alex Jones and Matt Baker recall their most memorable encounters...
Celebrating five years on The One Show, hosts Alex Jones and Matt Baker reveal their best – and worst – guests
Although they seem to get along like a house on fire on air, it turns out that sometimes a little scene unfolds in the studio before the One Show cameras start rolling. ‘A little disagreement’ is how presenter Matt Baker puts it.
He and his co-host Alex Jones seem like the nicest people on television. Could it be that – gasp – they’re secretly at each other’s throats?
Alas no. The only time there are ever ‘words’ is over the temperature in the studio: he wants it down, she likes it cranked up. ‘She’s in a dress but I’ve got to wear a jumper or something, so I’m sweltering,’ confides Matt.
‘He gets very hot,’ Alex, 39, affirms. ‘Really, Matt should be in a dress and I should be in the jeans and jumper.’
‘I know it sounds boring but that’s about it,’ says 38-year-old Matt. ‘There’s never actually been a moment where we’ve kicked off with each other.’
Not bad going for an on-air partnership that’s now reached the five-year mark – half the lifespan of The One Show, which began in 2006.
When former hosts Christine Bleakley and Adrian Chiles departed for ITV amid rumoured multi-million pound contracts, there were endless guest presenters until Matt – who’d done stints on the couch from time to time – came on board permanently.
The duo have now presided over hours and hours of live TV with its many perils – surly guests, sweary Marys, unruly pets, missed cues and even a flooded set due to a water leak – the latter shortly before Hillary Clinton was due on air. ‘The set was literally floating in the studio and Hillary was on her way,’ recalls Matt. With massive security issues, alternative options were limited and the duo ended up chatting to her in the reception area of the old Broadcasting House. ‘It was really last minute but she handled the situation flawlessly,’ recalls Alex.
There have, however, been a few memorably awkward encounters over the years. One was with Baywatch star Pamela Anderson, who arrived late and stared at herself on the monitors rather than engaging with the presenters. ‘She then ran off because we showed a picture of her she didn’t like!’ Alex has said. Then there was moody Bruce Willis, who arrived with an entourage of 30, then refused to talk about the film he was there to promote. ‘It was odd,’ reflects Matt. ‘You just think, “Why are you here, Bruce?’’’
Alex, meanwhile, admits she has the odd bit of trouble with names, calling Bryan Ferry ‘Fryan Berry’ and the BBC’s ex-political editor Nick Robinson Rick Nobinson. ‘ Lady Gaga became Lady Garden once,’ she hoots. ‘It was hard not to laugh myself.’
As well as being a celebrity magnet, The One Show’s also become the go-to show for big events, from the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee to the FA Cup draw. The former took its presenters, both Strictly graduates, to the music room of Buckingham Palace where they did the foxtrot together for a show about the Diamond Jubilee concert.
‘It’s the stuff you dream of as a child, and it was incredible, even though it was freezing – they don’t put the heating on,’ reveals Alex. ‘And all I could think was, “Don’t lift me up too high or I’ll be in the chandelier and we’ll never come back!”’ The Jubilee celebrations also saw them presenting live from a green bus, with a conveyor belt of A-listers from Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder to Kylie jostling for camera time. ‘They were queuing up to be interviewed,’ says Matt. ‘At one point we were trying to listen to timings in our earpieces, and then Sir Paul was behind us saying, “Oh, hello”,’ adds Alex.
Favourite guests are too legion to mention, although for Alex, tennis ace Billie Jean King stands out. ‘She had these brilliant quotes about life and she wrote a couple down for us each on One Show cards. I’ll always treasure them,’ she says.
For Matt it’s singer Dolly Parton. As a big country music fan, he’d been thinking of wearing a cowboy shirt on air for the occasion, and told the singer so. ‘I said I had a couple of cowboy shirts and she grabbed me by the hand and said, “Come and show me, let me choose,” and there she was in my dressing room choosing my shirt! To be so close to her, not only that, but to have her picking my outfit...’
Alex also had her special Dolly time. ‘I asked her whether I could watch her putting her make-up on. She does it all herself, and she sat in front of the dressing table mirror in our old green room for four hours. Four hours! She was so lovely, not affected at all, just happy for somebody to sit there and watch the transformation, chatting away.’
On another occasion, Matt managed to convince Billy Ocean to serenade Matt’s wife Nicola live on air with Love Really Hurts Without You, the song playing when she and Matt met as teens. ‘My wife was in the audience because we were going out for our tenth wedding anniversary,’ he recalls. ‘Billy had his guitar with him and I asked if he’d sing Love Really Hurts Without You to my wife in the audience. And, sure enough, he did. It was magical.’
Physiotherapist Nicola, 37, his wife of 12 years and mother to the couple’s children Luke, nine, and Molly, seven, is the ‘total rock’ that keeps the home fires burning back in Hertfordshire. Alex, meanwhile, lives in London with Charlie Thomson, 37, her insurance broker husband of nine months, and says she’s just as much of a homebird. ‘Matt and I aren’t ones to go out after work,’ she reveals. ‘We just like to do the job, do it well and go home.’
Her romance has mirrored her flourishing TV career: she met New Zealander Charlie a few months in to her new presenting stint, and her engagement was revealed live on air by her former Friday co-host Chris Evans, who until last summer sat on the couch while Matt presented Countryfile. ‘I didn’t see it coming,’ she laughs. ‘Charlie [who was in the studio that day] was dying of embarrassment. But it was a nice way for everyone to find out.’
Alex admits she’ll probably need to be surgically removed from that One Show couch – with no prospect of either of them gallivanting off to commercial shores in the near future. ‘We’re content and there are worse things in life than feeling happy with where you are,’ she says. There most certainly are. The One Show, weekdays, 7pm, BBC1.