KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES
Yvie Jones gets set for her big radio debut
One minute into a conversation with WHO’s Abi Moustafa and Yvie Jones is her charming lovable self – she’s stressing out because she’s trying to pack up her Sydney home after being announced as Fifi Box’s maternity leave replacement on Fox FM radio in Melbourne. “I need to Marie Kondo my life,” she admits. “I’m very nostalgic so getting rid of certain things, I’m like, I shouldn’t need this, I don’t need these,” she continues. Yes, the same authenticity and realness we witnessed Jones possess – as one half of a Gogglebox couple alongside longtime friend Angie Kent and once again on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! – are ringing true. “It’s very lovely,” she says about garnering public interest after becoming a media personality. “It’s just so nice, it’s very validating really. You know, to be so loved by people, for just being yourself.”
So clearly this is why she seemed a natural fit to join Brendan Fevola and Byron Cooke on Fifi, Fev and Byron, which sits in the breakfast slot for Fox FM. “Well, I’m excited to meet famous people … Meeting a famous person for 10 minutes, asking intimate questions and then never seeing them ever again. I just think that would be so weird!” she says.
In between inappropriate jokes about the A-listers she’d love to meet, Jones turns serious as we mention her time in the jungle on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! She reflects on a heated chat she had with fellow contestant Justin Lacko. “Our body image is so skewed by the media, by the fashion industry, by the beauty industry, by the weight loss industry, by the fitness industry. I think that there’s so much expectation to be a certain way that our body image is becoming distorted,” she says. “There’s such a sad amount of people, men now as well, and women but mostly women who have got such
a hideous body image. It’s so important to talk to each other about it and I think the more we talk, the more we can understand that we’re all the same. We’re all part of perfectly imperfect and it’s OK to be exactly who we are,” she continues.
Jones, who is now in her late 40s, says she’s more than comfortable about her ageing process, too. “You know what, that’s why I look at my body and I think, my body is amazing, it can do things that other people would love to be able to do – even growing old, that’s such a honour to be able to grow old, some people haven’t had that luxury. So, I think it’s just a daily ‘pull your head out of your ass’. Just have a little reminder, that’s why there’s such great social media platforms for that exact kind of thing, reminding you on a daily basis, that you’re doing OK. You’re actually doing great, let’s be grateful.”
While Jones has her body-love down pat, she reveals she’s searching for a different kind of love – she’s ready to be romanced, to find a life partner. “I was really not looking for anything for a long time and then this year, I just had a good chat with myself and realised I would really like to fall in love. I haven’t fallen in love in a really long time. It’s such a beautiful feeling.”
She doesn’t hold back on the criteria she’s set for a potential lover. “Someone who is really into me, and vice versa, someone that you can be a complete equal and a companion [to]. For me, it’s mostly humour and compassion. They have to love dogs and get into charity, a good heart, really kind, but funny. I think I’m putting it out there and it’s going to happen because everything I’ve put out there is coming now.”
Someone else who is ready for love is Australia’s newest Bachelorette and her best friend, Angie. “She’s doing great, she’s getting fit and healthy and ready, as ready as you can for such a weird surreal experience,” Jones says.
“Angie is very savvy, she knows what’s going on. She knows they’re going to put some really great guys in there and some duds and she’s all good with that. She’s like, ‘Yeah I know I’m making a TV show’… so
“I would really like to fall in love”
she’s totally prepared. She’s pretty excited about meeting, potentially, the love of her life. We were talking about the lockdown
– I’m just like ‘how the hell am I going to go a day without talking to you?’”
Asked if she’d make a cameo on the show, Jones says: “I hope so. It would be mad not to invite me to a cocktail party. I need to jump out of those bushes. I’ll make all the decisions for the whole night, that would be so brilliant. Angie would laugh so hard, she would love it so much that it would just get out of control.” We can only hope!