Alex Jones has admitted that she was so hungover when she had to present in Swansea for BBC Music’s Biggest Weekend that she ‘didn’t care’ when pop star Taylor Swift performed.
The One Show presenter, 46, recounted the story during an appearance on the podcast Dish on Monday, where she and host Nick Grimshaw told his co-host Angela Hartnett all about their struggle to keep it together at the music festival in 2018.
Alex explained the blunder came about after she had partied too hard at her husband Charlie Thomson’s 40th birthday party the night before and, as a result, she felt so rough the next day when she and Nick had to co-host for BBC One that she couldn’t enjoy the show, despite loving the singer’s work.
‘Honestly, Angela, it was awful. Not often do I go to work with a massive hangover. But of course, you know the stars collided,’ Alex explained to Angela.
‘That was the night before, what can you do? Oh, I couldn’t, I couldn’t, oh. Everything was floating.
Oops: Alex Jones told Dish podcast hosts Nick Grimshaw (R) and Angela Hartnett (L) about the time she didn’t care when Taylor Swift performed at Biggest Weekend because of a hangover
Shake it off: The singer (pictured in 2023) performed at BBC Music’s Biggest Weekend in 2018, but Alex couldn’t enjoy the show after feeling rough after celebrating her husband’s birthday
‘Taylor Swift performed. She was in the distance, and I was like, I don’t care. And I love her! I was like, I don’t care, I need to lie down. Ugh, hot.’
Nick was feeling similarly unwell after he had enjoyed a night out at a festival the day before they were due to present the Biggest Weekend, and he described to his co-host how he ‘had a bad hangover’ for the whole event.
When Angela asked how long the pair were made to present the show, Nick replied that they had to be ‘on for or a few hours’, and they were stuck in ‘a glass box’ which meant they also struggled with the heat.
Nick added that they were ‘above a crowd’ as he added: ‘And then it was Taylor Swift on live, so we had to keep like cutting back, so if they were, you know, a song they weren’t playing or she was chatting, they’d come back to us and we’d be like, ‘You’re watching Taylor Swift, and me and Alex Jones go under on BBC One.’ It was bad.’
That wasn’t the only blunder that Alex spoke about on the podcast as she also shared a story about a time she gave Lionel Richie Norovirus.
‘We went to the O2 to see Lionel Richie cause Lionel Richie was coming on the show, there you go,’ Alex said. ‘And on the way back started feeling a bit dodgy, you know the dodgy ‘Uhhh. Right, we need to open the window a bit.’ Full blown norovirus.
‘I know. Not nice, no. But anyway, being the warrior I am, I went to work the day after. Cause I felt better, I thought, 24-hour thing. And at the same time, Charlie was watching at home starting to go under with said norovirus.
‘Lionel Richie comes on that night, at the end of the interview, I went to kiss him on the cheek, and he turned his head and went full lips.’
Blunder: Alex said on the podcast, ‘Taylor Swift performed. She was in the distance, and I was like, I don’t care. And I love her! I was like, I don’t care, I need to lie down.’
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‘He’s not the only one will go into that in a minute. Anyway. We ended up in a full-on lip situation. And then he got the norovirus. And he had to cancel the rest of the tour,’ she added.
Alex also went on to talk about a time when she was involved in a crash whilst with Chris Evans when she was tasked with driving a bus for The One Show.
The presenter said the incident ‘wasn’t really [her] fault’ as she explained to Nick and Angela: ‘It was Chris Evans, so nobody’s gonna be surprised. And he said, ‘I know Al, let’s learn to drive a bus, and then we’ll take loads of people on the Brighton Vintage Car Run from London to Brighton for lunch, they’ll pay loads of money.’ I was like, ‘No, they won’t, they probably won’t get there in one piece.’
‘It’s really hard to learn to drive a bus. But, if you wanna go on a coach holiday, I can drive a coach, bendy bus, a double decker, what do you want? I can take all of these people in this room onto the continent. You could be my tour guide, you could do the mic bit.
‘But honestly, like half an hour in, he went, ‘Right, we’re gonna go out on the road,’ I was like, ‘Are you mad?’ So spatial awareness, not amazing. And Chris went first, he was all right because he’s driven loads of cars, loads of vans and stuff.’
But when it was her turn to drive the bus, Alex revealed that it didn’t go well: ‘Me, not so much. So next thing I know, I was on the M40, which for people who don’t know, that road is busy.
‘One of the main roads out of London to Oxfordshire, in a massive coach, massive, going in on the outside lane – I felt cocky quite quickly, and coming up on the inside was a Waitrose lorry, and I clipped him. I did.
‘I went too close, and his wing mirror flew off. God knows, I couldn’t bear to look behind me. Well, I couldn’t see in the mirror- well, there is no mirror in a bus, there’s only side mirrors.
‘And well, Chris, I’ve never seen him look serious apart from that moment, ’cause he thought, what have I done? But honestly, I- now I can reverse a bus and all of it.’
Alex and her New Zealand-born insurance broker husband Charlie met in 2011 at a party, before getting engaged in February 2015 and tying the knot on New Year’s Eve the same year.
They welcomed their first child, baby Teddy, into the world on January 22, 2017 and Alex gave birth to her second child, a boy called Kit, on May 13, 2019.
On March 25, 2021, Alex revealed she was pregnant with her third baby and she gave birth to daughter Annie on 21 August, 2021.
Dish from Waitrose & Partners, hosted by Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett, is available on all podcast providers now.
Src: dailymail.co.uk
