Alex’s tear-stained reunions. A girl and the stranger who saved her seconds from death are just two of the people Alex Jones reconnects in her emotional new series
- The One Show presenter Alex Jones opens up about latest tear-jerking project
- Media personality from Wales will be reuniting people who helped each other
- READ MORE: Alex Jones details career ‘backlash’ over her Welsh accent
Hosting The One Show, Alex Jones exudes style and confidence, but she wasn’t always like this. The shortest in her class at school, a late developer – flat-chested until the age of 15 – Alex underwent an astonishing transformation.
And now, if there’s one person Alex would love to be reunited with, it’s the drama teacher who she credits with taking that painfully shy girl and enabling her to become the vivacious, heart-on-her-sleeve presenter she is today. Her mother Mary says it was as though her daughter ‘had a personality transplant’, and without it, Alex admits she wouldn’t be hosting The One Show.
Today, not only is Alex courageous enough to share her own traumatic life experiences in public, but she is also finding another voice in presenting her own passion projects.
The latest is a series called Reunion Hotel in which people who are connected by an extraordinary story are brought together again.
‘It’s the show I’ve been waiting for because it draws on the skills I’ve learned not just as a broadcaster, but as a wife, mother, friend and daughter,’ says Alex, 46. ‘These people are sharing stories that they’ve kept hidden for so long, in some cases. The show takes you on an emotional rollercoaster – one minute you’re laughing and the next you’re in tears.’
Alex Jones’ (pictured) latest project is a series called Reunion Hotel in which people who are connected by an extraordinary story are brought together again
Alex’s own story has amazed many of her former teachers at Maes-yr-Yrfa, a Welsh-language school in Carmarthenshire, who remember the cripplingly shy schoolgirl.
‘We’ve all got that person in life of whom we think, “Do they know how grateful I am?” There’s a teacher, in particular, who I’d like to make sure knows this. She transformed me. I was a shy child and I don’t know how she did it, but she brought me out of my shell. I’m so grateful because without it, I don’t think I’d be doing the job I do. I don’t think I’d have the same relationships socially. She helped me build myself up. Everybody needs that one person, a mentor, and that’s often a turning point.’
While Alex’s reunion with her teacher will have to wait, there are lots in this six-part series – three per episode – taking place at Iscoyd Park, an 18th-century manor in North Wales.
It would be wise to have tissues to hand as Tegan Badham, 21, meets with her mystery rescuer.
Beautician Tegan, from Cwmbran, Monmouthshire, was at King’s Cross Tube station travelling to a pop festival when she fell on the live tracks, suffering horrific burns to her back, legs and arms.
A train was hurtling into the station and, struggling to get back up, she was certain she was going to die.
But just in the nick of time, Tegan was hauled off the tracks by hotel developer Anthony Smith, 31. He saved her life but they were separated before they could say a proper goodbye.
The tale greatly moved Alex who, with her insurance broker husband Charlie Thomson, is parent to Teddy, five, Kit, three, and one-year-old daughter Annie.
‘Imagine being a mother and hearing this story. Tegan was almost electrocuted and couldn’t move. She’d have died if her shoes hadn’t had rubber soles. And as a train is approaching, this stranger reaches down and pulls her up. It’s like a film.’
The presenter says she still loves her work on the BBC’s The One Show, which she co-hosts with Jermaine Jenas and Ronan Keating
Beautician Tegan (pictured), from Cwmbran, Monmouthshire, was at King’s Cross Tube station travelling to a pop festival when she fell on the live tracks
Alex’s maternal heartstrings are pulled again when she meets Rhiannon and Damian Atkinson, whose five-year-old daughter Pippa was born with epidermolysis bullosa, a disease that causes the skin to blister because it’s so fragile, leaving painful wounds. Pippa screams in pain as blisters all over her body are lanced.
The family were able to adapt their home to meet her needs thanks to a band of volunteer builders who are part of a charity which makes house alterations for people who’ve fallen on hard times. Pippa’s parents feel she’s at an age to understand how the builders helped her, and they want to thank them in person.
Alex says, ‘Once you become a parent, it’s really hard with stories that involve children because you put yourself in that position. Pippa’s parents explained how they couldn’t pick her up after she came out of the hospital. You can’t imagine having a newborn and not being able to scoop them up.
‘The day the family came to the hotel it was boiling hot and Pippa was so happy. But every few hours they had to take her up to the room to sterilise needles and pop the blisters, which goes against human nature, it’s inflicting pain.’
Amid all this emotion Alex is the perfect host, her warmth putting the ‘guests’ at ease. How is she, from the withdrawn teenager she used to be, now able to be so openly em- pathetic?
‘I don’t hold back myself, and I talk about me, my family and my husband. The guests will know as much about me by the end as I will about them. I think that’s a fair exchange,’ she explains.
‘What I love about my job is conversation. On The One Show, I get to meet amazing guests. They don’t have to be Hollywood A-listers who, frankly, are sometimes tricky. Everyone’s got an interesting story.’
Alex’s Reunion Hotel series comes hot on the heels of another passion project – the W channel’s documentary series Alex Jones: Making Babies, in which she explores IVF and fertility by training to become a fertility assistant at King’s Fertility’s London clinic.
While Alex has never needed IVF, she has experienced the heartache of losing a baby, which ‘hit her like a ton of bricks’. She’d become pregnant in October 2017, when Teddy was ten months old.
‘It was devastating. I was having a scan and I knew straight away when the image popped up. I could tell the way this little foetus was bobbing about on the screen that something wasn’t right. And the sonographer wasn’t saying anything,’ she recalls.
‘Then she said, “I’m really sorry. There’s no heartbeat.” And it was as if the world had stopped. I don’t think it matters if you’re two weeks or seven months along, you’ve envisaged life with that child and maternal instinct’s taken over.
‘As we walked out we didn’t know what to say. Charlie is amazing in situations like that and can read me like a book. He said, “What do you want to do now?” I said, “I suppose we’ll go for a cup of tea and then I’ll go to work. What else am I going to do? It’s done.”
‘The hard part is walking around with this little foetus still inside – it’s so grim. Nobody talks about it.’
She said she’s had an overwhelming response to the Making Babies series. ‘I’ve never had feedback before like this on a show.’
But that’s not to say she doesn’t love her work on the BBC’s The One Show, which she co-hosts with Jermaine Jenas and Ronan Keating.
Because it’s so fast-moving there are inevitably gaffes, such as when Alex introduced singer Joss Stone as ‘Josh’ and got album statistics wrong when talking with Ed Sheeran. Luckily, the blunders are laughed off.
‘Everybody makes mistakes. And when it happens, Ronan is the worst. I can’t even look at him for laughing. I can feel the energy. And I can hear producers in my ear saying, “Right, don’t lose it,” because sometimes we’ll be linking to something serious and it takes all my willpower, thinking of the saddest things like when my cat died. Once we start laughing, we cannot stop.
‘I do my job as well as I can. I take a lot of pride in it. And when I’ve done the best I can do I think, “There was nothing else I could have done.” But in regards to my children, I worry about every decision, so I reserve my anxiety for that.’
Will Alex do more shows she’s passionate about?
‘My family is complete so it’s exciting to move into a slightly new phase in my career. But I also feel lucky for what I have already and if nothing else came, I’d still be super-satisfied because The One Show is an amazing job. So I don’t want to be greedy.’
Reunion Hotel, Thursday, 8pm, BBC2 and BBC iPlayer.
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