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IF MY SON HAS A CHILD AT THE AGE I DID, I’LL BE 80!
The One Show’s Alex Jones, who’s just had her first baby at almost 40, on the problems facing older mums – and her fascinating new genealogy series
Many new mums will recognise how Alex Jones felt the night before she returned to her job as co-host of The One Show earlier this year, after a few months away looking after her new baby. ‘I felt absolutely sick,’ she says, shaking her head.
Partly it was the trepidation experienced by anyone who’s been away from the office for a while – in Alex’s case only three months. But three months in which the sunny, beautifully groomed presenter had become a jogging-bottom clad full-time mum to Edward Alun Burrell Thomson, Teddy for short, who arrived in January. ‘You spend a long time in this fog where the best you can do is pull on a pair of joggers and a maternity bra,’ she says. ’And there’s nothing wrong with that because I think people put pressure on themselves to look like they used to immediately, and it’s just impossible. But like everybody, it doesn’t matter what job you do, you have that fear. Will things have changed? Will I even remember how to do it?’
On top of that was the realisation that as much as she loves her job, she wasn’t actually quite ready to return to work. ‘With hindsight it would have been bet ter to have taken longer off, but of course you don’t know that before you go – you make al l these plans and when you’re still at work you say, “Yeah, it’ll be fine, I’ll be fine to come back after three months.” I felt fine in myself, but I didn’t feel ready to be separated from Teddy,’ she says now.
Nonetheless, a touch of self- confessed maternity leave paranoia – her own absence coincided with the screening of BBC1 thriller The Replacement, in which a high-flying architect played by Morven Christie goes on maternity leave only to discover her cover, the brilliant Vicky McClure, has a sinister agenda – meant she had to grab the bull by the horns. In the end, that first nerveracking appearance on The One Show sofa back in April alongside co-presenter Matt Baker went swimmingly, with the viewers – the show pulls in
around 4 million five days a week – delighted to have her back if the congratulatory tweets were anything to go by.
‘Yes it was fine,’ she laughs now. ‘Adrenaline and familiarity kicked in, Matt was there, he was holding my hand through it and said, “Al, they’re pleased you’re back.” So that was lovely. I was lucky I had a huge welcome. And my editor helped me to work out a part-time solution, because I told him I didn’t feel I could come back full-time straightaway. He’s a father of four and he came over to my house to talk things through and work it out.’
That meant building up to full- time over a few weeks and now – furnished with a ‘fabulous’ nanny, a New Zealander as a nod to her husband Charlie Thomson’s birthplace – she’s had the confidence to strike out and front a new series of her own, The Secrets In My Family, in which she helps those taking part to dig deeper into their history using a pioneering DNA test to uncover the truth behind their family mysteries.
In the first episode we meet Andrew Lovell, the former drummer of 90s group M People – a black man with two white parents. He was brought up believing he was adopted until, at the age of 35, Andrew was told by the woman he thought was his adoptive mother that she was in fact his birth mother. She and her husband had told people he was adopted to avoid the shame of her extramarital
‘Now I think I should have taken longer off work’
affair, and the show tries to find Andrew’s black biological father.
Then there’s Kirsty, 24, from West Sussex who’s trying to find her missing father who disappeared from her life when she was just two. She doesn’t even know if he’s still alive but she’s now engaged and would love to track him down in the hope she might have someone to walk her down the aisle. It turns out Kirsty’s mother suffered from post-natal depression and her father couldn’t cope. Alex’s ‘DNA detectives’ find him, but after no contact for 20 years will he want to meet her, or will she feel abandoned again?
‘It was very emotional,’ says Alex. ‘All the stories in the show were, although they’re also very different. The one thing you walk away with is that so many families have a story. And it taught us that it’s really good to talk to relatives while they’re still here, because in a lot of cases they weren’t around any more and some of those questions couldn’t be answered. That was awful because there was no closure. So ask while you can.’
It was all very emotional to film but at least she had Teddy, now nine months old, to come home to. She and Charlie, an insurance broker, have been together for six years. They got married on New Year’s Eve 2015 when Alex was 38 and, as she puts it now, she ‘got lucky’ in terms of becoming pregnant pretty quickly after she turned 39. So quickly, in fact, that Alex didn’t suspect a thing for the first nine weeks. The timing was ironic too given that shortly after she announced her pregnancy to delighted One Show viewers, she was fronting
a documentary about fertility that she’d filmed before she got pregnant after discovering that her mother Mary had gone through an early menopause at the age of 43 – a condition that can be genetic. For the show Alex underwent fertility tests herself, a nerve-racking affair which could have made for uncomfortable viewing. ‘Halfway through making the documentary I realised, “Oh goodness, we’re doing these tests, what if they come back and it’s really bad news?” Luckily they were OK, and I’m so glad because it would give a lot of women my age watching hope. But I was so aware then, and I am now, that really it’s pot luck, isn’t it?’
Which brings us to the delicate question of a sibling for Teddy: having turned 40 in March, does Alex feel pressure to start thinking about baby number two? ‘Anybody could guess the answer to that – obviously we feel the pressure because time is always ticking and as we know from friends’ experiences having one doesn’t mean a second will come easily,’ she says. ‘Teddy’s had such an impact on both of us and our families, if we end up having just one child we will still feel incredibly lucky. But because he’s been such a joy, it would be great to give him a sibling. Again, it’s something we can’t bank on – we can’t take it for granted that it will happen.’
She recalls how on the morning Teddy was born she and Charlie had an ‘oh goodness’ moment following the first hospital visit from the maternal grandparents. ‘Charlie said to me, “Oh my God, if Teddy has a child at the same age as us we’ll be 80 walking through that door”, and that really struck a chord with me. You wonder if we’ll be able to help him like my parents are helping us. There’s a whole missing generation going to happen here where children might not necessarily have grandparents; that’s just bizarre.’
The realisation was one of the prompts that persuaded her to write a book, due out early next year, about older motherhood. Less of a manual, its aim is more to open up a conversation. ‘The guidebook market is pretty well covered,’ she says. ‘But I think maybe the wider discussion about being a slightly older parent hasn’t happened and it needs to because it’s becoming more commonplace.’ Alex is quick to emphasise there’s much to recommend older motherhood too. ‘I’m not a patient person at all. I’m very on the go, but with Teddy I have endless amounts of patience and I’m not sure that would have been the case had I been a mother ten years ago.’
And while she says her body has changed – not that you’d know it to look at her – she doesn’t much mind that either. ‘I had all these plans when I was pregnant – that I’d be back out running and all that. But I haven’t put my trainers on since Teddy was born. There are a lot of bumps and bits that I didn’t have before, but who cares? It’s all about perspective, which you get with age too. We’ve been so lucky to have him and at the end of the day you’re choosing between going for a run or having that half an hour with him. For me I’d rather be with Ted. He’s the most important thing and everything else takes a back seat. So in that sense it’s given me clarity.’
But then it’s fair to say that Alex doesn’t seem to have a diva-ish bone in her body. Take the turbulent times at the BBC earlier this year when it was forced to publish details of its top earners’ salaries, leading to an almighty fuss about the gender pay gap. The gulf between Alex and Matt wasn’t one of the worst – at £400,000-£449,999 her annual earnings came in at £50,000 lower than his, although he also fronts Countryfile – but it’s impossible not to ponder whether there was a frisson of discord on The One Show sofa.
It’s a suggestion Alex laughs off. ‘Genuinely, I’ve never talked about salaries with my work peers as I find it uncomfortable, like many people do,’ she insists. ‘However, I know my editor is a fair man and I trust him to have enough respect for both myself and Matt to be paying us the same.’
She did add her signature to a letter to BBC director-general Tony Hall from more than 40 female BBC luminaries, expressing their dismay at the gender pay gap. ‘I was surprised by what happened, and it’s fundamentally wrong this still seems to be the norm in 2017. That’s why I was happy to put my name to the letter. My understanding is he’s proactively addressing this and I sincerely believe things will change.’
Meanwhile, the once shy girl from Carmarthenshire, who only found her wings in sixth form, is determined to pass on her Welsh heritage to her son: on the morning we meet his nanny has taken him to a Welsh-speaking playgroup. ‘It turns out there’s a big community of Welsh speakers in London,’ she says. ‘I’ll be singing to him in Welsh, little nursery rhymes.’
Charlie’s parents, alas, are on the other side of the world. ‘His mum came over when Teddy was born and we’re going to New Zealand for Christmas, but Charlie does feel the distance. We FaceTime them every other morning for half an hour but it’s not the same. His parents try to hide it as best they can, but you can see them getting upset. But what can you do?’
With her career still going from strength to strength and a lovely new baby, her forties look set to be her power decade. ‘Oh I don’t know,’ she laughs. ‘I tend to go week by week. I’m sure there’ll be brilliant things in this decade and there’ll be difficult things – that’s just life, isn’t it?’
‘A whole generation may not have grandparents’
The Secrets In My Family starts on Monday at 9pm on W. The One Show is on weekdays at 7pm on BBC1.