Grif Rhys Jones

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Griff Rhys Jones has no regrets over leaving comedy behind
Jul 18 2009
Western Mail

GRIFF RHYS JONES says he has no regrets about his transformation from veteran comedian to Michael Palin-style adventurer. The Welsh-born presenter, who made his name in hit comedy shows Not The Nine O’Clock News and Alas Smith And Jones, is now more likely to be seen on our screens traversing Britain’s rivers or championing British national heritage and the arts.

The latest series of River Journeys celebrating Britain’s rivers and their history will reinforce Jones’ image as a champion of our heritage, following his TV series Restoration, Why Poetry Matters, Mountain and Three Men In A Boat, and his brief stint as president of the now defunct Civic Trust England. But despite learning extreme activities such as abseiling down Scottish waterfalls to film the series, he said he is currently taking each presenting opportunity at a time.

He said: “I’ve never been in a position to command the heights of television and say, ‘Look out, here comes my next series’, it’s all a question of, ‘Let’s see how this one goes and we’ll see if we can find any more work for you’.” But he said he doesn’t miss comedy because he includes it in his public speaking engagements. “Mel [Smith] and I did, I think, 11 or 12 years of comedy and before that we did four years of Not The Nine O’Clock News. I don’t regret a moment of it, but we did it for an awfully long time.”

However, he is enthusiastic about a gathering of his old Not The Nine O’Clock News team – Smith, Pamela Stephenson and Rowan Atkinson – for a show to mark its 30th anniversary. “I said I was up for it in the spring, but I haven’t heard another word,” he said. This may be a minor irritation, but he also gets hot under the collar about many other aspects of television.

“There’s a tendency in certain areas of TV to manipulate what’s there to make it bland, to play safe. But I know, coming from a background of comedy, that it’s not blandness people want. They don’t want things to be safe and easy, they want excitement, they want something to happen.” Having sold his production company Talkback, which he co-owned with Smith, for a whopping £62m in 2000, the Cardiff-born 55-year-old has no urgent need to find work, but he confessed that he still gets guilty if he turns down offers of work.

“I think that it’s about who I am as a person. I work. That’s what I do,” he says. “When we finished Smith And Jones, I said okay, I don’t see the problem about not working. And I tried that for a little bit – bought a boat and sailed up the Baltic – but every time I’d go to a party back in England people would say, ‘Are you all right? Haven’t seen you on the telly for a while’. People start to treat you in a rather ghastly way as a sort of failure, has-been non-person. But more subtly than that, I feel that work, and being involved in lots of different things, is what makes life worthwhile.”

Jones met his wife Jo, a graphic designer, during his early years at the BBC. She has remained the stabilising influence during his career, and his two children, George and Catherine, are now in their 20s. “I’m not attracted to glamour,” he said. “I don’t drink anymore so I find standing in a nightclub utterly pointless. I don’t mind that people do drink and call me an old fuddy-duddy, but the idea of standing at two in the morning with a drink while somebody yells in your ear is utterly not what I want to do with my life.”