‘It was a huge privilege, being trusted with that sort of level of coverage’ – Alex on Queen TV role
AFTER 12 years fronting The One Show, you might think that presenter Alex Jones doesn’t get nervous hosting live TV anymore.
But having just come off a stint as part of the line-up of BBC big names fronting the coverage of Queen Elizabeth II’S death, the Ammanford star is keenly aware of the privilege of being involved in such events, as well as realising that without the nerves in place you’ll have lost your edge.
That “edge”, the buzz, the excitement, would certainly come in handy when Alex returned to the stage at St David’s Hall to host the Bafta Cymru Awards in person last Sunday – the first time the ceremony has been held with a live audience since 2019.
It’s been a busy autumn so far for Alex. The end of the summer saw her return to the BBC One nightly show after the summer break, front segments of the aforementioned royal coverage and have time to spend with her “brilliant” family.
“It was a huge privilege, really, trusted with that sort of level of coverage,” said Alex.
“For years and years there’s been a plan in place of what was going to happen and that plan was only revealed to us on the day the news was announced. I had no idea I was going to be part of the coverage.
“Then my boss said, ‘Listen Al, you’re going to be central to the coverage. We are going to change the name of the show. It’s going to be called A Tribute to Her Majesty, you now need to come with me to Manchester.’
“Those 10 days were madness. I think I went up and down to Manchester about six times. I think the BBC really reminded everybody why they are so important in British culture.
“When events like that happen, everybody turns back to a channel they trust, and on those occasions it’s 100% the BBC.”
Alex was just one Welsh voice front and centre, and she flags Huw Edwards as doing an “incredible job”.
And it was sitting alongside fellow countryman Gethin Jones when she had a moment of realisation, which you could say shows she still has that edge, that love for presenting.
“I was presenting with Gethin. Me and Geth have known each other since we were 18 and that’s the hilarious thing, we remember dancing in Clwb Ifor Bach, presenting our first show together at 22 and we turned to each other that first show we did, on the Saturday night, when everything was a bit weird. He said, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’ And I said, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’
“And it’s that we’d never have thought, all those years ago, we’d both be sitting there about to go on air for an hour’s broadcast in the wake of the Queen dying, and it’s bizarre how life turns out, really bizarre.”
Bizarre it may feel to Alex and Gethin, but the pair have earned their stripes over the past two decades, with Alex a nightly presence and Gethin a daily one on daytime show Morning Live. It all comes back round to keeping the audience engaged and giving it 100%.
“I guess I’m less nervous than I used to be,” added Alex.
“But again, you know, I still feel whatever I do, it doesn’t matter if it’s an audience of five people, 10 people or three million – I still want to do the best job I can do. And of course, there’s a sense that there’s always going to be a sense of nerves and anticipation there.
“I think when that completely disappears, you’ve probably lost the edge for it. For me, I just, whatever I do I want to give it 100%, I want to be at my best. I want to be in front of people that I’ve worked with for years and years, and give them a really good, slick show.
And aside from the millions of viewers Alex reaches each evening, there’s one little group who is undoubtedly her biggest fan club – her family, including husband Charlie Thomson, daughter Annie and sons Teddy, five, and Kit, three, with the former thinking everyone’s mummy is on TV, Alex revealed, while skateboard-loving Kit is “having the time of his life” at his forest school, where children learn through hands-on experiences.
“Teddy’s five, so he’s still really little and I think he thinks that’s basically what work is,” she laughed.
“He does watch the show and he loves it. We were watching, it was the morning of the funeral actually, and he said to me, ‘Mama, you know King Charles, do you think he has those socks on that are made in the factory by Gu and Da?’
“And that was actually something he’d seen on the show, we featured the Corgi factory which is near Ammanford and they’d been making socks for the jubilees.
“It’s really interesting that it resonates, he remembered. And I’m super-proud that it’s a show he can be in front of without any worry that there’s going to be anything unsuitable. I’m not there at their bedtime, so the deal is, if he has a bath first, he can watch.
“And Kit is having the time of his life, it’s incredible [the forest school]. He was in a conventional nursery and he just wasn’t settling at all and we found this forest school and they do skateboarding lessons and he loves it. I mean, he’s only three, he’s tiny, but he loves anything that’s dangerous and this is just on the right side of dangerous. He’s really happy.”