Jamie's love for Joely

10 April 2012

Jamie Theakston cuts an incongruous figure loping around backstage at The Lyric, Shaftesbury Avenue, on a weekday afternoon. Everyone else is weighed down with a chippy's belt or shuffling about in sagging pullovers. Jamie is a contrasting picture of vitality in his asymmetrically fastened white designer shirt with crisp jeans, sporting the neat moustache he has grown for his role as an army officer in Somerset Maugham's play, Home and Beauty. (Early reviews are unpromising: this newspaper called the production 'ghastly', although Theakston gave 'the least bad performance'.)

The first thing that strikes you is his height --Six foot four,' he confirms, with a wince, 'I'd like to be a bit shorter' - his head-boy good looks and youthfulness. Though 31, Jamie has the gangly gait, the light laugh and that sense of finding everything slightly embarrassing that you might find in a much younger man.

I'd been expecting someone slick, practised at the soundbite and the story of his life. After all, he is a golden boy of broadcasters. His presenting career has included the children's TV show Live and Kicking, The Priory and Top of the Pops, plus he fronted the BBC's coverage of Millennium Night, Glastonbury and the Jubilee Party at the Palace, and that's before you've touched on his radio output. So it is something of a surprise to discover that he finds talking rather awkward. He appears to be slightly uneasy discussing the most mundane of subjects.

This might be explained by the revelations of his private life. For those of you who haven't been paying any attention, Jamie's profile was raised dramatically when he was romantically linked with the actress Joely Richardson, whom he described as 'the love of my life'. One year later and they have been spotted together, off and on, sparking rumours that they are once more an item.

Then there was last December's visit to a Mayfair brothel with a speciality in bondage, leaked by the prostitutes involved, complete with photos, to The People. In the process, Jamie Theakston has become much more famous, but for all the wrong reasons, and he clearly knows this. Added to his woes, last month the Appleton sisters published their autobiography, in which Jamie, as an ex-boyfriend of Natalie, features in some detail. I wonder if she asked for his approval (Nicole claims to have cleared her comments about her ex, Robbie Williams). 'Oh no,' he looks genuinely astonished. 'Of course not.'

Still, the most humiliating it gets seems to be a reference to him throwing up on their first date, before plummeting between the pushed-together single beds. Rather sweet, in fact, a bit gauche, and, bar the brothel, very much how Jamie comes across. It could have been a lot worse, surely? But - despite his smile - it is clear he is furious. 'I think there's an odd arrogance about people who write books like that,' he says. 'You think of Ulrika Jonsson or Edwina Currie who've never done anything great, for them to sort of get up and say [he leaps up and addresses the empty bar in his confident, presenting voice]: "Excuse me, everyone, I just want to tell you about when I grew up," and you think, "Oh, Shut Up." They must feel they are so important.' He sits down again. 'I haven't read the book, I'm going to wait till it makes the Booker list.' A snappy line, but it's the same one he gave in another interview and it isn't by any means the only time he resorts to a tried-and-tested response which makes you wonder: who is Jamie Theakston when he isn't performing.

Presumably his recent experiences have made it harder for him to form a romantic relationship. 'Because I'm worried they might write a book about it?' He laughs, not altogether convincingly. 'I think you have to accept that if you fall in love with someone, you have to trust them.' Was he in love with Natalie? 'Um, I think we were very fond of each other, at the time,' he says quietly. Presumably that's why he has gone out with so many celebrities - theoretically, sticking together diminishes your chance of being stitched up? 'Yeah, but also you spend time with those people. Someone said to me the other day, "Do you only date famous people?" And I thought it was an odd question, because the only famous person I've been out with was Joely. Natalie wasn't famous when I started going out with her. And also, these are people you meet in your day-to-day life. But actually, it's true. I have always found performers very attractive, I don't know why.'

Never mind Natalie. It's him and Joely we're fascinated by, partly because it seems like unfinished business, but mainly because it seemed an unlikely pairing. She is thespian aristocracy, a divorcee six years older than him, with a nine-year-old daughter and the kind of natural grandeur you just don't get from doing children's TV. Was it a pairing of tall, skinny, photogenic people? Was it a sex thing? Will he ever, more to the point, recover from having tasted the fruits higher up the tree?

Theakston looked like a grateful puppy when he was dating her, and a beaten one when it finished and, touchingly, has made no bones about the extent of his devotion. He smiles sheepishly when her name is raised. 'She's someone I have a great love for. I think she's an amazing woman.' His chin is on his chest, his brown eyes focusing hard on the carpet, 'And that's all I want to say.'

Wouldn't he like to clear up how they broke up? 'No.' Not even the rumour that he was dumped courtesy of a 'Dear John' popped through his letter box? 'Well, that's not true,' his voice is very soft now. 'But I never feel obligated to clear up that stuff because...' and he tails off again. Still, they obviously are special friends, because he isn't seen out with any of his other exes. 'They're both married!' he cries, unleashing his first genuine laugh since the interview began. Anna Friel? 'She wasn't ever an ex, nor was Sophie Dahl and I haven't been out with Mariah Carey.' Who has he been out with? 'Beverley [Turner, a TV presenter] and Natalie, and they're both married now. So,' he says after a long pause, 'I guess I should be getting married.'

Jamie is a family-orientated bloke with a sister, Kate, three years his junior, who has just returned from travelling in Australia. The mere mention of her makes his face brighten. When he's not in Notting Hill, he's in his Grade I-listed house in the Sussex village of Ditchling, overlooking the village green where he learned to play cricket when he wasn't at Lancing, the local public school. His parents, who live close by, are retired. His mother was once a model and his father ran a computer-supplies business. There is a hint of the boy who likes to be mothered about him, despite the ladies' man image. Is he aware of being attractive? 'Well, um...' he screws up the nose that is, allegedly, the most requested of plastic surgeons ('I just don't believe it,' he says and, for the record, it is like a bird's beak, not especially straight, so he could be right). The question of whether he was originally dragged out of the radio studio (his first job was doing travel bulletins for GLR) because the powers that be didn't want to waste his looks, is met with a Theakstonesque response. 'Possibly, what happened was that...' There is a long, long pause. 'I'd met one of the producers and I was sort of hanging round, and one of the editors said, er, "Who are you?" and I remember then meeting up with the guy who was in charge of presentation...' All the hesitation suggests either he was a good deal more pushy than he likes to admit now or it really was a case of 'Wow, the boy's got potential.' We'll never know. But it would be a mistake to assume he thinks of his line of work as a doddle that he just fell into (via Christie's and a business studies degree). On the contrary, he waxes lyrical about the skill of 'locking' an eight-year-old channel hopper: 'Some people dismiss that kind of TV as frippery,' he says 'but it isn't.'

You can't help but suspect that Jamie feels the same kind of dismissive attitude operates where he is concerned which is why, presumably, we are here at The Lyric a few days before the opening night of Home and Beauty, a three-handed farce set in 1918. It's his second outing on the West End stage, the first having been in Art, earlier this year.

That, to his mind, was the big leap into the void. 'Not many people knew I had acting experience.' (From the age of 14 to 17 he was a member of the National Youth Theatre.) But this seems riskier. Art you can understand - modern, witty, minimalist, the perfect vehicle to demonstrate the potential of an all-round media talent. Home and Beauty, on the other hand, is a period farce that hasn't been on the London stage since the Thirties. Clearly there is a plan afoot to officially rebrand himself. 'It's more like a sabbatical than a change of career,' he says. 'I feel that you can extend your window of opportunity by doing different things.'

He's also been 'seen' for various film roles and plays Liza Tarbuck's love interest in an upcoming episode of Linda Green. But now the acting isn't an attempt to escape the public Jamie Theakston in the way that Art was. 'Art was a great opportunity to dress up and be someone else,' he says, 'because that's when all the tabloid thing was happening.' I wonder who took the brunt of the brothel scandal - his parents? 'They were very supportive and said, "Don't worry about it,''' he says, mumbling now. Looking back, would he say he was having a laugh or was he, in fact, miserable? 'That's a good question. I think there was probably a hefty dose of each...' He pauses and grins. 'There was definitely an element of both,' he says.

If you ask me, Jamie does want to be taken more seriously by the public and, possibly, by Joely Richardson in particular. For all his jollity, there is something unsettled about him, as if he isn't quite sure how he should be playing the rest of his life, or if playing has run its course. He admits he's vain, but that he's an old-fashioned sort, who does The Times crossword and loves Sunday lunch with his family and who'd never have a manicure. 'Oh God, no,' he says, thrusting his fingers at me. 'Look at how badly I bite my nails. That's a sign of the neurosis that exists within me.' And this time I think he genuinely means it.

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