David Jones exclusive interview: 'When Roy Keane eyeballs me, I think – that's good TV'

It is a brave person who challenges Graeme Souness, Gary Neville or Roy Keane, but that is an occupational hazard for David Jones.

The presenter of Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football and Super Sunday, Jones has been with Sky since 1998 but two formative years of training on a local paper have left such a mark he still finds himself miming shorthand on his thigh when watching a film.

It also means he is unlikely to be intimidated by the prospect of confronting characters like Souness and Keane. “I had to do death knocks, knocking on doors trying to get a photo of a girl who's been knocked over by a car and killed that morning,” he says. “That to me is a lot more daunting than asking football questions to ex-footballers.

“I can't say that I ever feel uncomfortable. There are times when it might look like it on camera, when Roy is giving me the eyeball and really coming at me. I'm thinking ‘this is good’. That's my impulse: this is good television.”

In an attempt to enliven a flat chat after a goalless draw between Manchester United and Liverpool in 2019, Jones began prodding Souness for an angle. Mid-stream, Souness effectively accused Jones of looking at him funny. Frankly, it looked terrifying.

Jones remembers that incident without fondness, feeling it was clumsy. “He was very apologetic to me afterwards. He didn't need to apologise to me, I'm there to provoke him. He is a bear. A lot of them are. And my job is sometimes to poke them with sticks if I think the conversation is not interesting.”

Jones is one of British sporting TV’s most familiar faces but he has kept a low profile. He says this is his first ever newspaper interview, but maybe he has just been too busy? He has studied for grade two in the piano, organised a charity golf day for Blood Cancer UK, completed a creative writing course, “flirted” with learning French (he is now focusing more on Spanish) and qualified as an expert in wine. “I could be a sommelier in some restaurants but not in others.”

He grew up in the north-east but there is only the faintest trace of that in his broadcasting accent now, which has the sheen of Sky’s base in Isleworth. His wife is a Geordie but he supports Sunderland and is a non-executive director at the club. Not a problem - for now at least. “If Sunderland were in the Premier League and I was there, I could imagine that some people might take umbrage with that,” he says.

He was promoted to his current role when Ed Chamberlin left Sky to join Channel 4 in 2016, but Jones looks back on the day he was given a logoed coat as his real moment of arrival.

“I remember going to see my dad up in North Yorkshire, I knew how proud he was for his lad to go off to London and come back with a Sky Sports jacket, which I wore very proudly. I soon learned with any kind of Sky Sports memorabilia you are just attracting attention wherever you go. That's not something I really wanted to do.”

Jones comes across on screen as neither overawed nor insubordinate, and refreshingly free of ego. His is an unobtrusive style, at odds with the presenter-celebrity archetype or shoutier YouTube generation nipping at their heels. “A bit vanilla, probably in some people's eyes,” he offers.

This is by design. You may not be able to remember many standout Jones moments but there is one most weeks from Neville, Jamie Carragher, Keane or Souness. Does he now use his nose for news to probe for good social media fodder from his guests? “I'd be lying if I said that wasn't the case.” But he is as satisfied by a worthy tactical chat on Super Sunday as a viral moment.

Last Sunday he was forced to fill time unexpectedly as Newcastle’s match against Tottenham was delayed after a fan suffered a cardiac arrest. David Ginola was on the panel, who had previously had a traumatic cardiac episode of his own which left him clinically dead during a charity match in 2016.

“You can be a bit clumsy in those moments and say, ‘Well, David, you died. Tell us about that,’ and he might not want to talk about it. So really, it was just pushing at a door, to see how far he wanted to open it and actually he did want to talk about it.”

In the event it was dealt with beautifully. “When the watching audience of however many million people are totally engaged, listening to a conversation on CPR... If that can help one, two or 10 people, then the value of that moment is incredible.”

Feel is everything in a role like Jones’s, nurturing the instincts to respond appropriately to an unpredictable sport. In December 2019 he briefly became the story. Neville drew political parallels to an allegation of racist abuse by Antonio Rudiger, but Jones interrupted with an officious disclaimer about the distinction between Neville’s views and those of Sky Sports. Was that something he knew he had to do at that moment or was he told to by a producer? “That was somebody in my ear. We revisited it and had a lot of conversations internally about that, because I think we handled it pretty badly."

Jones publicly apologised later that night. “I look back at it as a pretty horrible moment in my television career but thankfully one that I've managed to get through." There was no lasting enmity from Neville. “I bumped into him in a restaurant probably about two weeks after that, and he gave me a big hug.”

Despite that, Neville remains a spiky colleague. “Gary and I used to have a bit of a battle about wearing ties. He thought it was sacrosanct for Super Sunday and Monday Night Football. And I suppose I stopped wearing them because he thought it was sacrosanct. I wanted to draw a little line in the sand.”

Perhaps there is some ego there after all. In the background view of our video call are a set of shelves displaying books, a poster, a green football boot worn by Sheffield United’s George Baldock (his favourite player from Jones’ spell as a director at Oxford), and a black and white photo of someone in cricketing whites.

“Who’s the cricketer?” I ask.

“That’s me,” he says.

David Jones will present the action from Manchester United v Liverpool on Sunday. Watch exclusively live on Sky Sports from 4pm.