Alex Jones has admitted she was so hungover when presenting in Swansea for BBC Music’s Biggest Weekend that she ‘didn’t care’ when pop star Taylor Swift performed.
The One Show host, 46, told 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 struggles to keep it together at the 2018 music festival .
Alex explained that the blunder came about after she partied too hard at her husband Charlie Thomson’s 40th birthday party the night before and as a result felt so rough the next day when she and Nick had to co-present BBC One that they could not enjoy the show, despite the love of the singer’s work.
“Honestly, Angela, it was awful. I don’t often go to work with a huge 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 floated.
Oops: Alex Jones told Dish podcast hosts Nick Grimshaw (R) and Angela Hartnett (L) about the time she couldn’t care less 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. Bah, hot.’
Nick was equally unwell after enjoying a night out at a festival the day before they were due to present the Biggest Weekend, describing to his co-host that he was “heavily hungover” throughout the event.
When Angela asked how long it took the pair to present the show, Nick replied that they “needed to be on for a few hours” and that they were trapped in “a glass box,” meaning they also struggled with the heat.
Nick added that they were “above a crowd” as he added, “And then it was Taylor Swift live so we had to keep making cuts so if they were, you know, a song they didn’t play or they were on chatter, they came back to us and we said, ‘You’re watching Taylor Swift, and me and Alex Jones are going down on BBC One.’ It was bad.’
That wasn’t the only blunder Alex talked 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, because Lionel Richie was coming to the show, there you go,” Alex said. And on the way back I started to feel a little dodgy, you know the dodgy ‘Uhhh. Right, we have to open the window a bit.” Full norovirus.
‘I know. Not nice, no. But anyway, being the warrior that I am, I went to work the next day. ‘Cause I felt better, I thought, 24-hour thing. And at the same time, Charlie watched at home as the norovirus went down.
“Lionel Richie comes over 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 have to lie down.”
‘He’s not the only one who will go into that. Anyway. We got into a full lip situation. And then he got the norovirus. And he had to cancel the rest of the tour,” she added.
Alex also talked about one time she was involved in an accident while with Chris Evans when she was given the job of driving a bus for The One Show.
The presenter said the incident ‘wasn’t real’ [her] guilt,” as she explained to Nick and Angela, “It was Chris Evans, so no one will be surprised. And he said, ‘I know Al, let’s learn how to drive a bus, and then we’ll take a lot of people on the Brighton Vintage Car Run from London to Brighton for lunch, they’ll pay a lot of money.’ I was like, ‘No, they won’t, they probably won’t get there in one piece.’
“It is very difficult to learn how to drive a bus. But if you want to go on a holiday with a bus, I can drive a bus, a winding bus, a double decker, what do you want? I can take all these people in this room to the mainland. You could be my guide, you could do the microphone part.
“But honestly, about half an hour later, he said, ‘Okay, we’ll hit the road,’ I was like ‘are you mad?’ So spatial awareness, not great. And Chris went first, he was fine because he’s driven a lot of cars, a lot of vans and stuff.’
But when it was her turn to drive the bus, Alex revealed that things weren’t going well: “Me, not so much. So the next thing I know I was on the M40, which for those who don’t know, that road is busy.
‘One of the main roads from London to Oxfordshire, in a huge coach, huge, pulling into the outside lane – I felt cocky pretty quickly, and a Waitrose lorry came up on the inside, and I clipped it. I did.
“I got too close and his wing mirror flew off. God knows, I couldn’t bear to look behind me. Well, I couldn’t look in the mirror – well, there is no mirror in a bus, there are only side mirrors.
‘And well, Chris, I never saw him look serious from then on, because he thought, what have I done? But honestly, I… now I can flip a bus and stuff.”
Alex and her New Zealand-born insurance broker Charlie met at a party in 2011, before getting engaged in February 2015 and tied 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 named Kit, on May 13, 2019.
On March 25, 2021, Alex revealed she was pregnant with her third baby and on August 21, 2021, she gave birth to daughter Annie.
Dish from Waitrose & Partners, hosted by Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett, is now available on all podcast providers.