Television presenters don’t come much more user-friendly than Matt Baker.
So much so that if you cut him in two, I’m pretty sure he’d have ‘thoroughly likeable’ written through him like a stick of rock. The powers that be at the Beeb certainly seem to think so.
A programme (BBC1’s Countryfile, as it happens) starts slipping in the ratings. Quick. Revamp. Who you gonna call? Matt Baker.
Married presenter disgraced in Twitter scandal. (Yup, The One Show’s Jason Manford, who was caught having web sex sessions in his hotel room with as many as 12 different women.) Hurry. Find a replacement. Who you gonna call…
Add to this the fact that when Matt, a former Blue Peter presenter, sits on a sofa or slips on a pair of wellies, audience figures skyrocket. Oh, and that he loves his wife, doesn’t have affairs or drink to excess, or even send sexy texts… Hang on a minute, there must be something, Matt?
‘Before I got the job at Blue Peter, they sat me down and told me, “You’ve got to be honest about any skeletons there might be in your closet”,’ he says. ‘“Well, there is something pretty big,” I replied… “I’ve got three points on my driving licence.”
The worst thing was, I hadn’t told my dad. The editor came round to the farm [in the Durham Dales where Matt grew up] and we were sitting round the kitchen table. He said, “Well, there was that point when we asked him if there was anything in his past, and he told us about the three points on his driving licence.”
My dad went, “What!”’ Hmmm. What were the points for? ‘Speeding.’ I’m guessing 43mph in a 40mph zone. ‘The licence is clean now,’ he says, deadpan.
Matt, you see, is teasing. For, as well as being thoroughly likeable, he’s also – as Countryfile’s nine million viewers know – very funny in the sort of dry, clean way that the late Mary Whitehouse would have applauded. No bawdiness. No playing for cheap laughs. Just funny.
We meet as Matt is being lined up to replace Jason Manford permanently on The One Show. Negotiations have been going on for several weeks. A sticking point was Countryfile. Matt loves the programme and didn’t want to give it up. He joined last year when the rural affairs show was moved to its current primetime slot and the presenting team was changed – leading to accusations of sexism and ageism by sacked presenter Miriam O’Reilly. She is currently suing the BBC.
I wonder what Matt makes of the allegations. ‘Look at John Craven,’ he says. ‘He’s been on Countryfile for 20-odd years.’ Mmmm, but he’s a bloke. Women don’t seem to fare so well. Is the BBC sexist? ‘I don’t think so,’ he says. ‘There will come a day when somebody takes over from me. That day will arrive. I’ll just have to move on and do something else.’
Not, though, any day soon. Right now, Matt is one of the Corporation’s hottest presenters. Which just goes to show that you can be a thoroughly nice chap and get ahead. So what does this 32-year-old from the Durham Dales make of those who aren’t quite so… well, nice? More to the point, does he know what possessed Jason Manford to blow his presenting career so spectacularly?
Agile: Matt was junior British gymnastics champion until anaemia forced him to quit at the age of 14
‘I honestly don’t,’ he says. Could he, though, see himself ever getting quite so carried away on Twitter? ‘I certainly hope not.’
Matt’s been married to his physiotherapist wife Nicola – with whom he has two children, Luke, three, and Molly, one – for six years. She’s only the second woman he’s ever loved and, he says, from the moment he met her at a local disco he knew she was ‘the one’.
I had my first proper, proper girlfriend at school,’ he says. ‘We saw each other for a couple of years. I don’t want to start blaming her…’ Dumped? ‘Yeah.’ Heartbroken? ‘I was upset. I must have been about 16 when it ended.’ He smiles.
‘Then I met Nicola at university. She’s my rock,’ he says with huge feeling. ‘She’s also the best mother you could wish for. We’re a strong force. I put a lot of my success down to her.
‘It’s difficult for her right now. She’s not seeing me as much as she was, but she’s coping.’
It’s a surprise she’s seeing him at all. As well as BBC1’s Countryfile and daily evening magazine show The One Show, Matt is wowing us weekly with his performances on BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing. So much so that Tess Daly has compared him to a ‘Latin sex god’ and even waspish Craig Revel Horwood has heaped praise upon him. So how does he do it?
‘If you dedicate yourself to something, you get a result. That’s a formula I’ve stuck to all my life,’ he says. ‘I don’t believe in doing something 70 per cent because there’s no point. You may as well not waste your time. Go and find something you’re going to do 100 per cent.’
Matt rehearses six hours a day on top of goodness knows how many hours he’s putting in on his telly shows. Isn’t he shattered?
‘I’m loving it,’ he insists. ‘It’s so different to what I thought. I thought I would enjoy it – thought it would be the most amazing thing ever, but that’s such an understatement. I can’t tell you the dedication required, the pressure you put yourself under to get a result. It’s exactly what I fell in love with when I was a boy.’
Matt, you see, was junior British gymnastics champion until anaemia forced him to quit at the age of 14. To know about this is to understand him. Gymnastics was his passion. He was ‘lost’ when he had to stop.
‘I started gymnastics because I saw some people doing moves on the television and thought, “I’d love to do that.”
That’s the way I was. I’d see things and think, “I’ll have a go at that.” I remember going to the circus and seeing someone driving round on a unicycle and wanting to do it. Father Christmas brought me one, so I was on the farm going up and down the yard until I learnt how to do it.
‘Gymnastics was my life. It was a very easy thing for people to take the mick out of. I was known as Jim-spastic for most of my childhood.’ That must have hurt. ‘Yeah, of course it did. It’s not a nice thing to be called.
But I used to have the opinion that whatever I’d set my mind to, I’d do, so it didn’t matter what other people said. But I was diagnosed with anaemia and couldn’t push myself quite as much physically. A halfway house wasn’t really an option for me.
Again, it was all or nothing. I just knew one day at training that that was it. I came home and it was over.’ He pauses, before adding with a laugh, ‘So I went and did pole-vaulting. I remember sitting down with my mum and dad saying, “What do you think I should have a go at now? Tennis?” We looked at a list of things. I don’t know how pole- vaulting came up.’
Matt, who has a sister Samantha, is enormously close to his family. His father is his ‘absolute hero’ and was best man at his wedding. ‘My dad made his own way in his life,’ he says. ‘I really respect him. He’s a great, really kind man and a very hard worker. He showed me the path and I followed it. He’s always encouraged me to just go for it.’
Multi-talented: Matt has won over a new army of fans following his performances on Strictly Come Dancing with partner Aliona Vilani
Indeed, it was Matt’s father who helped him secure his first presenting job, on Blue Peter. Matt, you see, rather fell into TV. He’d actually wanted to be a physiotherapist, but wasn’t much of an academic so didn’t make the grade. A chance appearance in a school performance of Grease (one of the cast fell ill) revealed a talent for acting so he was persuaded to apply to drama college and ended up at Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University.
‘The first year was spent sitting on a ball and dancing for a while. Then, during the second year, my wife’s auntie heard that Blue Peter was looking for a new presenter. I said, “OK, I’ll give them a ring.”
I got the name of the editor off the programme credits, rang directory enquiries for the BBC’s number and got through to his secretary. My dad’s one for just picking up the phone and going straight to the top. The secretary told me he was in a meeting, so I said, “Don’t worry. I’ll ring back in ten minutes.’”
Matt was on his fourth attempt when he realised he didn’t have a hope in hell of being put through. ‘I said, “I’m not going to get to speak to him, am I?” and the secretary said, “No.” When I explained what I wanted to talk to him about, she said they already had their short list. I asked her what I’d need to be on it.
She said, “A show reel, but it’s too late.” I told her I’d have one with her by the next morning. I got off the phone, Dad got the video camera out and we went round the farm. I jumped off the tractor and said, “Welcome to the Durham Dales.” We went across to the shed and picked up some little lambs, thinking, “The townies are going to love this.”
Then I put a big jumper on and read a children’s story in front of the fire, rode around the farmyard on my unicycle, videoed my telephone number and sent it in.
‘The next day, they rang me up and said they wanted me to come down to London. I’d never been to the capital before. Dad and me got on the train, walked into the studio and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’ve never forgotten how I felt. Strictly’s filmed in the same studio where Blue Peter used to be. You never lose the feeling.’
Matt, of course, got the job and remained with Blue Peter for nearly eight years, winning two Baftas for Best Children’s TV presenter. When he left in 2006 – with his sheepdog Meg – he had ambitions to start his own production company but TV offers started coming left, right and centre. ‘Weirdly, how I ended up here – doing Strictly and all my telly jobs – is a mystery to me,’ he says. ‘It’s not as if I set out as a young man and thought, “I want to be on TV.”
It just sort of happened. My mum’s a great believer in fate. She always says everything happens for a reason. I was gutted when I had to give up gymnastics. Now I’m living my life on the telly, although I’m exhausted, I haven’t felt healthier or happier in 20-odd years.
‘I love the craft of TV. The key to good television is capturing the energy, the essence when you’re there.’ Which is, I realise, the key to Matt.
Yes, he’s extremely personable, but he also has a genuine passion for television that reminds me of those much-loved faces of yesteryear, like Terry Wogan and Michael Parkinson; thoroughly likeable men who would no more sit in a hotel room sexy tweeting than turn up late in the studio.
Men who also, when it was time to go, stepped down gracefully. But for now it’s Matt’s moment. ‘Strictly is the most fabulous thing,’ he says. ‘I seriously don’t want it to end.’ Snap.
Strictly Come Dancing, Saturdays and Sundays, BBC1. Countryfile, Sundays, BBC1.
Source:Dailymail
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