Faith and fame

Aled Jones, pictured with the Duke of Malborough.

IT is more than 16 years since the teenage Aled Jones, with his pristine choir-robes and his little boy haircut, disappeared from our screens as his boy treble voice finally broke. But as I go to meet the adult Aled, those intervening years disappear. In many ways, he is little changed. He still oozes niceness and the respectful, well brought up air that can all be laid, he says, as his parents’ door. It is the ordinariness of his family life which helped him cope with fame and he can only wince, sympathetically, at the treatment Charlotte Church is getting at the hands of the press. It was easier for him, he says, being a boy. ‘The press weren’t so interested in me growing up, as they are in a girl.

‘But it was lovely when the media attention went away. I was 16 at time, when my voice broke. Mum and Dad were great with the press. They have always been quite cool about it, its not something they enjoyed doing, and they would never do a TV interview now for instance but at the time they were really supportive of me.’ He was brought up in a Christian family and remains a firm Christian. It was in church that his voice was first discovered, and he became a chorister in Bangor Cathedral before going on to sing in front of celebrities and royalty. His family often used to watch Songs of Praise when he was growing up ‘though it often clashed with bathtime in our house’. But he never imagined that he would end up one day presenting it. He was first offered the job at 18, just as he went to study at the Royal Academy of Music, but turned it down.

Aled Jones being interviewed by Door editor Rebecca Paveley

‘I had just gone to the Royal Academy and wasn’t ready to give the commitment. It wasn’t that I was going through a rebellious phase or anything like that, but I was having a good time in the Academy, running the student bar, playing football, doing all the things that normal 18 year olds do. This is a programme where you have to be very sensitive in the way you talk to people. I’ve learnt such a lot in the few years I’ve done it. In one programme you can go from talking to royalty to people who have lost children, and dealing with that takes experience. That is what I like about the programme, the variety of it.’ Often now, when he presents Songs of Praise he also sings. He is quick to say that ‘this wasn’t my choice, people wrote in and asked’ but laughs when I suggest he is being groomed as the next Harry Secombe. ‘I do get teased and called the junior Harry round here’ he admits.

Presenting the show has had a big effect on his own faith, he says. ‘My faith is a lot stronger now than when I started. I’ve seen people who have had horrendous things happen to them but their personal faith has helped them through it and that really does rub off on you as an interviewer.’ He describes his mission on the show as trying to make Christianity accessible.

‘The worse thing Songs Of Praise could do is force religion down people’s throats. I always try to make it accessible for everyone. You don’t have to swing from the chandeliers saying I’m a Christian, I’m a Christian, if that works for you, great but if you are a private person and going to the bottom of your garden is your church, then fine. And I think that what Songs of Praise is all about.’

The worst thing about doing the show is having to spend days and nights away from his wife Claire and daughter, Emilia, who is two and a half. ‘Emilia is the boss, she is a real terror at the moment,’ he smiles. He clearly adores his family and tries to keep his mornings as ‘family times’.

Despite his wealth of stage experience, he still gets apprehensive before shows. ‘I bite my nails terribly, I have done since I was tiny,’ he admits. ‘But I think a few nerves help’. True enough, before the recording starts, I see him pacing up and down muttering to himself, with prompt cards in hand. But as he leaves our interview to step up on stage and greet the 4,000 people who await him, he is all smiles and genuine warmth, with not a bitten nail in sight.

Photograhs by  Frank Blackwell