Gethin Jones has been a regular on our screens for years, but away from the cameras he’s faced his fair share of heartbreak – including a high-profile split and a near-death experience
Gethin Jones, the familiar face gracing UK households every weekday morning as host of BBC’s Morning Live, has had quite a journey.
Starting his career as a bank clerk, he transitioned into television presenting on Welsh language channel S4C before gaining national fame as a Blue Peter presenter. His daring feats included flying with the Red Arrows, learning to race like a jockey, and surviving the Bolivian jungle.
These experiences are undoubtedly proved useful while taking on a 24-hour skating challenge for Comic Relief alongside Morning Live co-star Helen Skelton this week.
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In 2007, Gethin, now 47, joined the Strictly Come Dancing line-up and made it to the semi-finals with professional dancer Camilla Dallerup. Over the years, he’s hosted a variety of shows, including This Morning and The One Show, and even made an appearance as a Cyberman in an episode of Doctor Who.
For the past five years, he’s been a co-presenter on BBC’s Morning Live, sharing hosting duties with Helen and Michelle Ackerley. But let’s delve into his life away from the cameras, which includes a high-profile split with his famous fiancée, a near-death experience, and confessions about his love life, including accusations of catfishing, reports Surrey Live.
Gethin met his match in fellow Welsh celebrity Katherine Jenkins on the set of Strictly, where he was a contestant and she performed as a guest. Their romance led to an engagement in February 2011, but by the end of that year, they had parted ways, announcing their separation on Twitter and expressing their shared heartbreak.
Following their split, Katherine admitted to being emotionally devastated during her tour, describing herself as a “total mess” and “in pieces”.
In a candid conversation with Tom Bryant on The Mirror’s Outdoors in Mind podcast, Gethin revealed that he struggled with depression after the breakup. He shared a particularly poignant moment: “I remember doing BBC Radio 5Live and going into the toilet at 5.30am going, ‘All right. Come on. Just focus for the next three hours, and then you can go back to being sad again.’ I definitely had a bad bout of depression during that time.”
Katherine has since moved on, marrying American director Andrew Levitas and having two children with him.
Gethin has also spoken about facing life-threatening situations while filming for Blue Peter.
In a candid chat with The Times, he shared some of his hair-raising experiences filming the BBC series, including a near-death encounter on a treacherous mountain and a terrifying attack by a crocodile.
He recalled: “Some of the most memorable trips during my time on the show were when I got to ride bareback with cowboys in El Paso, Texas, and when I nearly died while scaling the Spitzkoppe peaks in Namibia.”
Gethin continued: “The first attempt went fine, but the producer asked me to do it again so they could film a wide shot and I lost my bearings and got into difficulties because of how windy it was.”
He revealed: “I also have a scar on my ankle from when an alligator attacked me in a Louisiana swamp. Apparently, the alligator wasn’t hungry, otherwise I wouldn’t have survived.”
Gethin also opened up about his dating life, leaving fans in stitches as he revealed how a misunderstanding got him kicked off a popular dating app.
Speaking on the podcast Restless Natives with Line of Duty star Martin Compston and journalist Gordon Smart, he confessed that he was booted off Hinge after multiple women reported him for catfishing.
Gethin explained: “I had been kicked off Hinge twice in eight hours for violating the code of conduct. And what I think it was, was 300 women had reported me for catfishing, which – when you are on Morning Live, I should have known better, to not verify my account.”
In a hilarious anecdote about his efforts to contact a dating app, he recounted: “But the moment I had to write to Hinge: ‘Dear Hinge’, Thursday night at home, writing to an online dating app: ‘Hi, it’s Gethin here. I’m 46. Just wondering if I could get my money back, it’s not really working’. I got some food and then I came back and I thought to myself, what am I doing with my life?”
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